Moldova 2009 "Personalities"

Issue Date	26.11. 2009
ID	Michel: 678-681; Scott: 649a-d; Stanley Gibbons: 672-675; Yvert et Tellier: 592-595; Category: Dw
Design	Vitalie Rosca
Stamps in set	4
Value	1,20 L. - Eugenij Ionescu (1909-1994) 1,20 L. - Efrosiniya Kersnovskaya (1907-1995) 4,50 L. - Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) 7,00 L. - Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882).
Emission/Type	commemorative
Issue place	Chisinau
Size (width x height)	46 mm x 27.50 mm
Layout	4 MS of 10 stamp each (2x5)
Products	FDC x2, MS x4
Paper	Chalky
Perforation	14 x 14.5
Print Technique	Offset
Printed by	Enterprise d'Etat editorial-polygraphique Tipografia Centrala Chisinau Moldova
Quantity	100.000, 100.000, 50.000, 50.000
Issuing Authority	Ministere du developpement de l'information, Republique de Moldova

On November 26^th, 2009, the Post Authority of Moldova issued set of 4 stamps "Personalities" that shows some local and word wide famous persons, who had anniversaries in 2009:

• 100^th anniversaries of Eugenij Ionescu
• 102^th anniversaries of Efrosiniya Kersnovskaya
• 200^th anniversaries of Nikolai Gogol
• 200^th anniversaries of Charles Robert Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882), was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology.

Charles Robert Darwin on stamp of Moldova 2009, MiNr.: 681, Scott: 649d.

He proposed, that all species of life have descended over time from a common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.
He published his theory with compelling evidence for evolution in his 1859 book "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life", overcoming scientific rejection of earlier concepts of transmutation of species.
By the 1870s the scientific community and much of the general public accepted evolution as a fact.
However, many favoured competing explanations and it was not until the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis from the 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed that natural selection was the basic mechanism of evolution.
In modified form, Darwin's scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life.
In recognition of Darwin's pre-eminence, he was one of only five 19th century UK non-royal personages to be honoured by a state funeral, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, close to John Herschel and Isaac Newton. Darwin's work had far-reaching impacts on the development of Paleontology, Antropology and many other Biology related sciences.

The other three stamps of the set

MiNr.: 678, Scott: 649a.	MiNr.: 679, Scott: 649b.	MiNr.: 680, Scott: 649c.
Eugenij Ionescu (1909-1994), was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd. Beyond ridiculing the most banal situations, Ionesco's plays depict in a tangible way the solitude and insignificance of human existence.	Efrosiniya Kersnovskaya (1907-1995), was a Russian woman who spent 12 years in Gulag camps and wrote her memoirs in 12 notebooks, 2,200,000 characters, accompanied with 680 pictures. She wrote three copies of the work. In 1968, friends typed samizdat copies, repeating the pictures on the back sides of the sheets. Excerpts from the work were first published in Ogonyok and Znamya magazines in 1990, as well as in The Observer (June 1990). After that, German and French publications followed. In 2001 the complete text, in six volumes, was published in Russia.	Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852), was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist. Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism and the grotesque. His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing, Ukrainian culture and folklore. His later writing satirised political corruption in the Russian Empire, leading to his eventual exile.

Products and associated philatelic items

FDC (clean and circulated)		Mini-Sheets
	The reverse side is here

References

Technical details and official press release: Posta Moldovei

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Dr. Peter Voice from Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, Western Michigan University, for reviewing the draft page and his valuable comments.