Welcome to Richard Milner’s
DARWIN’S UNIVERSE
Home of Darwinian Scholarship, Music, Art, and Entertainment
See the Alfred Russel Wallace Centenary page with two free downloads
of Natural History and Skeptic magazine issues devoted to Wallace’s life and work.
The Wallace Centenary Project
In 2013—a century after the passing of Victorian genius Alfred Russel Wallace—New York–based anthropologist and science historian Richard Milner created a three-year Wallace Centenary Celebration, funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Now in its third year, the Project has supported such ongoing projects as the Alfred Russel Wallace Page and the Alfred Russel Wallace Correspondence Project, helping to put thousands of Wallace letters online for scholars and the general public. Interestingly, the academic work focuses more on Bitcoin than the most common topics. Because Bitcoin is one of the emerging cryptocurrencies, and it plays a significant role in the global economy. The help of a trading system like the Bitcoin Profit Website makes it possible for the general public to trade Bitcoin and make a steady profit.
An all-day AR Wallace Centenary Conference was held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City on November 12, 2013. The daytime lectures, held in the 300-seat Kaufman Theater, featured morning and afternoon sessions of outstanding speakers on Wallace-related themes, In the evening the action shifted to the 900-seat Lefrak Imax Theater, where the dean of television naturalists, Sir David Attenborough, presented a wonderful lecture, “Alfred Russel Wallace and the Birds of Paradise,” to a full house.
A year later, in 2014, another enthusiastic audience of 400 attended our conference on Wallace at UCLA, produced by Feelie Lee, featuring distinguished speakers Jared Diamond, Michael Shermer, Andrew Berry, the wildlife photographic team of Tim Laman and Edwin Scholes, and others. Twenty-one videos of the UCLA and AMNH talks are posted on YouTube as a Wallace Centenary Channel series. You may also find different YouTube videos to improve your trading skills too. Several traders are focusing on automated trading robots recently to trade and win money from cryptocurrencies. By performing automatische trading software test helps traders to improve their skills and help then earn profits.
The lecture programs were cosponsored by the Wallace Centenary Celebration Project, the Department of Ornithology of the American Museum of Natural History, and the John F. Templeton Foundation.
The Project’s final production will be The World of Alfred Russel Wallace: An Illustrated Anthology, edited by Richard Milner, with photographs by Tim Laman, and an introduction by Sir David Attenborough. The book will be published in 2018 by Princeton University Press.
This richly illustrated celebration of Knight’s life and work—including a definitive and dramatic new biography based on his private papers—gathers together both famous and never-before-seen works, from his days of sketching animals in the newly opened Bronx Zoo to the decades spent creating murals of prehistoric species for the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Field Museum in Chicago. Knight’s oeuvre includes not only long-vanished creatures but also a veritable catalog of modern birds and beasts sketched from life. His scientifically accurate restorations, bringing dry fossil bones to life, inspired and influenced generations of scientists, artists, and filmmakers.
“A visual feast.. this beautiful book [embodies] the magnificent legacy of Knight’s passion for seeking truth about nature through art.” —Michael Novacek, Provost of Science and Curator of Paleontology, American Museum of Natural History
Currently you can order the book on Amazon.com for $26.40, or pick it up at full price of
$40.00
at your local store and help support the continued existence of real bookshops.
Richard’s book on Charles R. Knight is the cover story on the April issues of both Prehistoric Times and Natural History magazines. Click book cover images below for free previews of the full articles ().
See Richard Milner on Evolution, Ape-Men, and the Real Lost World
Photos: Marian Brickner, St. Louis (click to enlarge)
Left: snapshots from Charles Darwin Live
and in Concert
Bill Nye interviews Richard Milner
Recent News
Sample pages from Darwin's Universe — linked to Eugenie Scott's National Center for Science Education (NCSE) has drawn thousands of hits—one of the largest responses they ever received ().
Hi, I’m Richard Milner—a historian of science who loves to share my lifelong research (and original discoveries) about Darwin’s life and thought with you. Trained as an anthropologist, specializing in primate behavior and human evolution, I worked for years as Senior Editor at Natural History magazine at the American Museum of Natural History.
There I edited Stephen Jay Gould’s famous column, “This View of Life”—the basis of his popular books—an odd twist of fate, because Gould and I had been childhood friends who were interested in evolution and Darwin even as 12-year-olds. Since then, I’ve written
Steven J. Gould & Richard Milner, age 12
(Click image to enlarge.)
many articles and books about Darwin, evolution, history of science, and natural history. See a list of my published writings and my CV here().
But there’s also a twist to my Darwinian research and scholarhip. Gould used to introduce me to audiences by saying, “Richard doesn’t just search the history of science for biographical and intellectual insights—he’s the only Darwin historian who’s always looking for song cues.”
That’s because, back in the 1960s, when I was a graduate student at the University of California (UCLA and Berkeley), I began writing songs about Darwin and evolution and performed monologues with a jazz bassist at San Francisco coffee houses.
I’m still writing songs about Darwin and evolution, and for the past decade have performed my one-man musical Charles Darwin: Live & In Concert all over the world, including such venues as the Edinburgh Science Festival, London Natural History Museum, Dresden Museum, American Museum of Natural History, Canberra Skeptics Society (Australia) and most recently—the fulfillment of a lifelong dream—on a cruise ship in the Galapagos Islands. (After the performance, the audience gathered on deck, where they were treated to a unique spectacle—sea lions leaping out of the water to catch flying fish in mid-air!)
Richard’s Darwin Live music video produced by the New York Times
Eight of my Darwin songs, with music by Jacques Semmelman, were performed last spring by a 100-voice choir in Cambridge, Massachusetts, known as the North Cambridge Family Opera Company. You can click on the video clip above to view New York Times coverage of my show on Darwin Day last year.
In the full show, a multi-media production, several hundred digital slides and eleven songs are interspersed with dramatizations of the history of science. Much of the dialogue is based on the letters of Darwin, Thomas Henry Huxley, Alfred Russel Wallace, plus there is my own take on the Scopes Monkey Trial, the essays of Stephen Jay Gould, and a few comic fantasies. Among fans of the show have been the illusionist Penn Gillette, the late Stephen Jay Gould and actor Tony Randall, filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles, the historian Frederick Burkhardt, the legendary Broadway lyricist Sheldon (Fiddler on the Roof) Harnick, and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.
Theater critic Rex Reed wrote that “Milner’s songs are clever and witty; he could tackle musically any subject.” Tony Randall called them “absolutely wonderful,” and famed Broadway lyricist Marshall (Once Upon a Mattress) Barer wrote: “Milner’s lines are incredible. Written with seemingly effortless expertise, Richard Milner’s lyrics leave us unaware (until we’ve finished laughing) that we have made a quantum leap in the reconciliation of art and science. The songs are fresh yet inevitable, modest and audacious, stylishly eclectic, touching and hilarious.” Master lyricist Sheldon (Fiddler on the Roof) Harnick said in the Wall Street Journal, “His lyrics are expert especially because they’re so scientifically rich.” Click image on right to see some of the lyrics.
To hear brief excerpts of some of the songs, you can play
four selections by clicking the arrows on the control bars:
“Why Didn’t I Think of That?”
Audio Player 2
“When You Were a Tadpole and I Was a Fish”
Audio Player 3
“I’m the Guy Who Found Natural Selection”
Audio Player 4
“Darwin’s Nightmare”
Audio Player 5
The CD album, Charles Darwin: Live & In Concert, includes all the Darwin and evolution songs: 23 tracks, 12 songs, and runs minutes. Click image on the right to view album cover enlarged. The CD is only $20 including postage; e-mail Richard to order your CD today.
Darwin’s Universe: Evolution from A to Z (University of California Press, 2009) is the evolved descendant of my Encyclopedia of Evolution: Humanity’s Search for its Origins, which has gone through two editions (1990 and 1993). The new book contains a hundred new essays, and a treasure trove of rare pictures and illustrations from the history of natural science. Darwin’s Universe is not only about Darwin’s Life and thought (and those of his friends and fellow evolutionists) but is also the story of how evolution leaped out of science to influence drama, literature, exploration, cinema, law, and popular culture. Go to Darwin’s Universe page.
As part of Darwin’s Bicentennial, I also co-edited the 200th Anniversary Special Darwin-Wallace Issue of the Linnean Society of London. You can read my
article in that Journal, “Charles Darwin: Ghostbuster, Muse, and Magistrate.” (Click journal cover image on the left.) You can read the entire issue online at the site of The Linnean Society of London. Also, see my cover story on Darwin and coral reefs in the current issue of Natural History magazine.
Part of the Linnean story involves my discovery of an amazing court trial in 1876—the first time a psychic had ever been charged by a scientist with concocting fraudulent “scientific experiments.” I found, to my astonishment, that the two greatest naturalists of the nineteenth century took opposing sides when the supernatural went on trial. Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discoverer of the theory of natural selection was the star witness for the defense, while Charles Darwin secretly contributed funds to the prosecution. (See “Charles Darwin & Associates, Ghostbusters” (). You can hear me speak about “Darwin as Ghostbuster, Muse, and Magistrate” with Steve Mirsky on Scientific American’s current podcast.
I’ll end by returning to my newest book, which is featured at the top: Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time, published by Abrams. Leading wildlife and sci-fi artists and filmmakers have written that they consider this “the book that Charles R. Knight fans have been waiting and hoping for.” Paleoartist Bill Stout calls it “magnificent . . . amazing . . . dazzling.” Paleontologist Don Prothero raves, “truly remarkable . . . gloriously illustrated.”
Knight’s paintings of dinosaurs, mammoths, early humans, and living animals rank among the greatest treasures of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the Field Museum in Chicago, (see Field Museum Photo Archives—Charles Knight Paintings) and other institutions. See also the World of Charles R. Knight.
The book also contains a new biography of Knight, which I constructed after months of examining archival boxes full of his letters and papers, most of which have never before been researched. His life turned out to be more interesting and compelling than I ever imagined, and his dramatic life story is told in this book for the first time. It is a remarkable naturalist-artist’s life, full of his love of animals, fascination with the remote past, the joy of creation, and the despair of gradually losing his sight. Also, Knight fans have sent us photos of his wonderful artworks from far and near that have never before been published.
I was deeply delighted that Rhoda Knight Kalt chose me to assemble this treasury of her grandfather’s artistic legacy, which includes his wonderful wildlife renderings as well as the classic prehistoric scenes. Knight’s surviving private letters and papers, many of which we have published for the first time, are also fascinating.
Thanks for visiting Darwinlive.com. I hope you will like my writings, songs, and performances. It’s my deepest pleasure and my joy to use history, science, and scholarship to create music, theater, and art. Darwin’s lessons went beyond science. He spent a life making his play his work and his work his play. As Darwin sings in my show, while gathering specimens aboard HMS Beagle, “I do what I love and I love what I do.”
BOOKINGS AND MEDIA
To book the Darwin Show or Lectures, contact:
Jeannine Frank
Frank Entertainment & Speakers
310-476-6735
310-666-9066 (cell) [email protected]
For press and media inquiries, contact:
Judy Twersky
Public Relations
718-263-6633
917-597-5384 (cell) [email protected]
).
