[imagesource: Stuart Roberts / Cambridge University Library]
Every great mind needs a trusty notebook to chronicle their thinking and help lead to those big, world-changing ideas.
Like Charles Darwin, who, without a notebook, would not have been able to solve one of humanity’s greatest mysteries.
It was in a cherished notebook that the great naturalist drew the now-famous sketch of The Tree of Life that went on to inspire his seminal work on evolution, the book On the Origin of Species.
Thanks to that notebook, we know where we come from:
Image: Stuart Roberts / Cambridge University Library
These small leather-bound notebooks that Darwin used in 1837 to keep track of his big ideas were stored at the University of Cambridge until they went missing in 2000.
Searches were carried out and in 2020, the librarians reported the notebooks as officially stolen – somehow, only 20 years after the fact.
The Cambridgeshire Police launched an investigation, which also involved Interpol. Then, 18 months later, something strange happened.
The two notebooks reappeared, just as mysteriously as they had disappeared, in “pristine condition in a pink gift bag, wrapped in cling film, alongside a printed note reading: ‘Librarian. Happy Easter. X'” reported The Telegraph:
Image: Stuart Roberts/Cambridge University Library
Image: Stuart Roberts/Cambridge University Library
Image: Stuart Roberts/Cambridge University Library
22 years later, there they lay on the floor of a public area of the library on the morning of March 9:
Dr Jessica Gardner (as seen in the header image), the university’s director of library services who first reported the notebooks as stolen, said: “My sense of relief at the notebooks’ safe return is profound and almost impossible to adequately express. We don’t know who took them and we don’t know how, but we know they are back and they are in great condition.”
As the police turn their investigation towards how the notebooks disappeared and subsequently returned, everyone in the historic university city is coming up with their own theories about who stole them.
Local antiquarian bookseller, Neil Adams, says that the books are valuable but really quite “worthless” and “unsellable” because of how intimate the antique book trade is.
“Everyone would know exactly where those two books came from.”
His theory is that someone who really adored Darwin stole the notebooks to enjoy for their own pleasure until the guilt became too much.
Another theory, this one from a third-year politics student, is that the thieves could have spanned two generations:
She said: “I think it could have been stolen by someone who was at the university years ago, and they have now got a child at Cambridge and they’ve asked them to put it back for them.”
The packaging is undergoing forensic analysis, so perhaps then the truth will be uncovered.
