Professor Martin J S Rudwick

Statement from Professor Martin J S Rudwick, Professor Emeritus of History of Science, University of California San Diego, Honorary Fellow, Trinity College Cambridge.

"I'm one of the few historians to be given access, many years ago, to some of Lyell's early notebooks, and have found them indispensable for understanding his fieldwork and his thinking. Lyell deserves to be treated as more than a forerunner to Darwin; he is important in his own right for understanding the natural sciences of the 19th century internationally. It will be a tragedy if his massive series of notebooks becomes inaccessible to scholars or, worse still, broken up. Do please help by promising at least a token donation; numbers count and the appeal is urgent."