#darwinday

In celebration of #DarwinDay we went into our archives and dug out these pages from ‘The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals’.

This was Charles Darwin’s third major work on evolutionary theory and laid out his early ideas about behavioural genetics.

It explored emotions in animals and humans and attempted to work out their evolutionary origins, like why we raise our eyebrows when we are surprised.

This page below is often referred to as ‘Screaming infants’, for obvious reasons.

The bottom photo on the page below is from a study by Darwin’s contemporary, neurologist Guillaume Duchenne (who’s work gave rise to the term ‘Duchenne smile’).

The book was quite revolutionary in using biological illustrations and paved the way for future works.

Though by the end of working on the book, Darwin wrote that he was 'sick of the subject and myself, and the world’.

The world ain’t sick of you, Darwin - Happy Birthday!

Pictures from the Royal Institution Archival Collection. The book was published on Albemarle Street in London, where the Royal Institution also finds its home.