Alfred Russel Wallace

1823-1913, British naturalist.

Early Life and Education

Born on 8 January 1823, Alfred Russel Wallace was the eighth of nine children in his family, growing up in rural Wales and then in Hertford, Hertfordshire, England. Due to the financial difficulties, he had to leave school and work. In 1837, Wallace moved to London, living with his brother John. There he started to read books and attend lectures, which laid a foundation for his religious skepticism. From 1840 to 1843, he worked as a surveyor. However, because of difficulty economic conditions, Alfred left in January 1843. After a short period of unemployment, he was hired as a master at the Collegiate School in Leicester, where he spent many hours reading at the library. In 1844, Alfred met a naturalist, Henry Walter Bates, with whom he formed a life-changing friendship. Bates brought Wallace to the world of delights to collect beetles. Four years later they headed for the Amazon and started their adventures.

Contributions

Alfred and Bates split up after several ventures; Wallace spent four years traveling, collecting, mapping, drawing, and writing in the unexplored regions of the Amazon River. He learned local languages and habits and collected insects and birds. Although many of his collection were missing during his return, he saved some of his notes and later he published several scientific articles, two books, and a map of the Negro River. He was acclaimed by the Royal Geographical Society, which helped to fund his next venture in the Malay Archipelago in 1854.

The Malay Archipelago

Over eight years in Malay Archipelago, he accumulated "almost 110,000 insects, 7500 shells, 8050 bird skins, and 410 mammal and reptile specimens, including over a thousand species new to science" (Beccaloni). Meanwhile, Wallace noticed a striking pattern in the distribution of animals and proposed an imaginary line, later known as Wallace's Line. When returning home, Wallace published a travel book, The Malay Archipelago. He introduced the islands through his vivid account.

Theory of Evolution

In 1855, he published "Sarawak Law" article ("On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species"), in which he concluded that "every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing closely allied species" (Wallace, 196). This showed that Alfred and Darwin thought alike and had similar conclusions. In early 1858, while suffering fever, Wallace came up with the idea of natural selection. Then he wrote a letter to Darwin and enclosed his essay "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type" outlining his ideas about evolution. Darwin consulted his closest colleagues, Charles Lyell and Dalton Hooker. They discussed and decided to send two of Darwin's previous articles, along with one Wallace's paper, to the Linnean Society. Later it was published, with both Darwin's and Wallace's names, entitled "On the Tendency of Species to Form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection" in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society in 1858. This was without Wallace's permission. Moreover, Wallace's contributions were placed after Darwin's, which stressed Darwin's marked impact on the idea.

In 1859, Darwin's book On the Origin of Species was published, stating his theory of natural selection. Nowadays the theory is known as Darwin's theory.

Controversy

Wallace and Darwin did not agree on everything. Surprisingly, Wallace was a spiritualist. He started to show interest in spiritualism in 1865; then he reviewed the literature on this topic and accepted it.

Sources

• Beccaloni, George. "Mini Biography",

wallaceletters.info/content/mini-biography. Accessed 17 Dec. 2020.

• Camerini, R. Jane. "Alfred Russel Wallace." Encyclopædia Britannica,

www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-Russel-Wallace. Accessed 17 Dec. 2020.

• McNish, James. "Who was Alfred Russel Wallace?"

www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/who-was-alfred-russel-wallace.html. Accessed 17 Dec. 2020.

• Wallace, R. Alfred. "On the Law Which Has Regulated the Introduction of New Species",

people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S020.htm. Accessed 17 Dec. 2020.