Student Summer Cruise to Repeat Darwin's Voyage to the Galapagos

Three Harvard students and a tutor are planning to retrace Charles Darwin's famous voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle through South America and the Galapagos Islands this summer and make a film of their findings.

By studying the flora and fauna and species variations that Darwin saw, the four hope to determine what influence the Beagle voyage had on Darwin's formulation of the theory of natural selection.

"It started out as an amateur brain scheme," Frank J. Sulloway '69, the originator of the project, said this week. Sulloway said that attempts to obtain support from educational television stations, natural history organizations, and professional moviemakers have been very encouraging, but as of yet no final decisions have been made.

Sulloway credits the active backing of Ernst Mayr, Director of the Museum for Comparative Zoology, Edward O. Wilson, professor of Biology, and Everett I. Mendelsohn, associate professor of History of Science, for getting the project off to a successful start.

Darwin Seminar

To complement the planned expedition, Mark Adams '66, a graduate student in History of Science, has started a Quincy House seminar on Darwin and the voyage. Allen Tobin, a graduate student in Biophysics who is also involved with the seminar, said that the seminar will try "to reconstruct Darwin's mind during the voyage of the Beagle."

Financial support is the main problem at this point. In an 11-page resume that the group has put out and sent to various people that might be interested in helping, the four claim that the project is expected to cost approximately $6000. Sulloway said that the group can raise about $2000 to $3000 on their own, but the rest will have to come from other sources.