John van Wyhe is a historian of science who specializes in the Victorian period, particularly Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. He is the founder and Director of The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online, the world's largest online resource on Charles Darwin. He has published 18 books, and lectures and broadcasts around the world. In 2009 he was invited from the University of Cambridge to take up a position created for him at the National University of Singapore, the first joint appointment between the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Having studied geology at the University of Wales, Gordon Chancellor obtained his PhD in 1979 from Aberdeen and Uppsala. By that time, he had read The Origin of Species and become fascinated by Charles Darwin. As a postdoc in Oxford he began research on Darwin's 'Beagle' collections and transcribed his field notebooks, work he continued during a career as museum curator and archive adviser. In 2004 he met John van Wyhe in Cambridge, leading to joint publication of the Notebooks in 2009.

His current research interests centre on the relevance of evolutionary theories to nineteenth century literature.