Birmingham-Southern College received an extensive collection of works authored by and about naturalist, geologist, and biologist Charles Darwin. The Tom Carruthers Darwin Collection is comprised of nearly 500 books that can now be found in the N. E. Miles Library.

The collection was donated by Thomas N. Carruthers, Jr., friend of the College and retired partner and former managing partner of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings. His collection contains books illustrated by Darwin, including “On the Origin of Species” and all 27 volumes of “The Correspondence of Charles Darwin,” plus other Darwin works on plants, animals, and the natural world. Other books in the collection are works by his contemporaries, studying similar subjects, and books about Darwin and his family.

“As a whole, the collection gives a well-rounded picture of Darwin himself and the time in which he lived and worked,” says Library Director Tiffany Norris.

Norris plans to install a display area for the collection this spring. Some of the most fragile and rare works will sit in display cases, and others will be accessible to the campus community and the public (once COVID-19 safety restrictions are no longer in place). The body of work is valued at $98,000.

“We’d like it to initially be accessible for browsing but not checking out, so students, faculty, and staff can come and use the items on site,” Norris says. “I’m also hoping to reach out to other community partners to see if they have items that would correspond with the Darwin books to use in our display cases.”

With hundreds of volumes to examine, the Darwin collection offers BSC students and faculty the opportunity to work with important primary documents surrounding the life and legacy of Charles Darwin, thanks to the generosity of Carruthers.

Carruthers serves the Birmingham community in a wide range of roles: he served as president of the Birmingham Rotary Club; he is a founding member of the Mountain Brook Library Foundation; he serves (and has served as chair) on boards of The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham, Lakeshore Foundation, Children’s of Alabama, and Birmingham Museum of Art, to name a few; and he was named Outstanding Lawyer of the Year in 2021 by the Birmingham Bar Association.

Among many awards and honors, Carruthers received BSC’s Medal of Honor for Public Service in 1992. His daughter, Virginia Carruthers Smith, has served on the College’s Norton Board of Advisors, and his son-in-law, David M. Smith ’79, is a past chair of the Board of Trustees. His grandchildren David Auston Smith ’14 and Virginia Gilder Smith ’16 are also graduates of the College, as is his daughter-in-law, Brooke Monroe Carruthers ‘95. Now Carruthers continues his impact with Darwin volumes gifted from his personal collection.

“We are very grateful that Mr. Carruthers thought of the Library here at Birmingham-Southern to accept the collection that represents decades of research into the work of Charles Darwin,” Norris says. “We believe the books will be extremely helpful for any faculty members, students, or community patrons who are themselves researching Darwin or this period of history.”

Learn about the different ways to give back to the Hilltop from our Office of Advancement.