Cambridge University has netted ?283,000 towards a project that aims to post on the web all the writings - published and unpublished - of Charles Darwin.

John van Wyhe, project director, said the resource enhancement grant was awarded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council primarily because the end product would appeal to so many people.

"It's a proper scholarly addition, but I don't see access as restricted by any means," he said. He expects the website to be useful to scientists, theologians and lay people.

Dr van Wyhe set up a pilot website when at the University of Singapore - he had the idea because students in Asia were struggling to obtain Darwin's texts. The Singapore site now gets 300 hits a day.

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He believes it helped in the bid for cash. "I think it showed what was possible and what could be done if you could search through Darwin's books," he said.

The funding will allow him to work full time on the project from October and to hire a researcher - to help transcribe previously unpublished texts, including more than a dozen of Darwin's notebooks from his Beagle voyage - and a web technician.

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Dr van Wyhe is the project director, but the application for funding was made by James Secord of Cambridge University's department of history and philosophy of science and by Janet Browne, a Darwin biographer at University College London.