Charles Darwin was not just an occasional contributor who used Nature to share his own findings and discussions (see Y. Liu Nature 574, 36; 2019). He also gave voice to naturalists around the world, at a time when the journal was not easily accessible to the international scientific community.

Roughly half of Darwin’s contributions to Nature were transcripts (with due credit) of reports and findings sent to him. The writers of the letters were from Brazil, the United States, Peru and Poland. His most frequent correspondent was Johann Friedrich Theodor (Fritz) Müller, a German scientist who emigrated to southern Brazil in 1852. Müller, like several of Darwin’s interlocutors, tested and observed facts described in On the Origin of Species (1859).

Müller’s support for the theory of evolution was expressed in his book Für Darwin (1864). Darwin considered it of such importance that he himself sponsored its translation into English, published the year of Nature’s launch, 1869, under the title Facts and Arguments for Darwin. This initiated a 17-year friendship between the two naturalists, documented by intensive correspondence. Between 1874 until the year before his death in 1882, Darwin transcribed seven of the scientific reports he received from Müller and submitted them to Nature.