Call for public holiday to celebrate Darwin

updated 8:47 p.m. ET Jan. 22, 2009

LONDON - A group of British lawmakers says naturalist Charles Darwin's work should be marked by an annual public holiday in his honor.

Lawmaker Ashok Kumar is one of 10 legislators backing a campaign to make Feb. 12 — Darwin's birthday — a national holiday.

Kumar said it would reward "one of Britain's greatest, if not the greatest, scientific minds."

The 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of his seminal work "On the Origin of Species" are both being celebrated this year.

Biologist Richard Dawkins, author of "The God Delusion," and Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick, one of the scientists who discovered the DNA molecule, have previously called for a public holiday honoring Darwin.

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