Charles Darwin’s Origin Of Species Is Voted The Most Influential Academic Book Of All Time

In the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin set out his ground-breaking theory of evolution rocking the scientific and religious world.

The 1859 scientific treatise beat the Communist manifesto by Karl Marx and the Meaning of Relativity by Albert Einstein among others to be voted the most influential academic book in history.

This top 20 list was been compiled by academic booksellers, librarians and publishers with the public invited to vote on them in celebration of the first ever Academic Book Week.

Origin of Species won 26% of the vote with runners up including the likes of the Complete Works of Shakespeare, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft, George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.

To help explain its significance, Professor Andrew Prescott of the University of Glasgow told the Guardian: ‘Darwin used meticulous observation of the world around us, combined with protracted and profound reflection, to create a book which has changed the way we think about everything – not only the natural world, but religion, history and society.

‘Every researcher, no matter whether they are writing books, creating digital products or producing artworks, aspires to produce something as significant in the history of thought as Origin of Species.’

Here is the top 20 academic books in alphabetical order, which one would you have voted for?

1. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
   

2. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
   

3. Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
   

4. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
   

5. On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
   

6. Orientalism by Edward Said
   

7. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
   

8. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
   

9. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
   

10. The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer
    

11. The Making of the English Working Class by EP Thompson
    

12. The Meaning of Relativity by Albert Einstein
    

13. The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris
    

14. The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
    

15. The Republic by Plato
    

16. The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine
    

17. The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
    

18. The Uses of Literacy by Richard Hoggart
    

19. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
    

20. Ways of Seeing by John Berger