After leaving school he helped at his brother’s surveying firm until he was hired as a teacher in Leicester in 1844. Wallace was born in 1823 in Usk (now in Monmouthshire). Nevertheless, his contribution to such ground-breaking thinking, coupled with Darwin’s support, ensured his entry to the highest ranks of the scientific establishment.Ĭharles Darwin was very much impressed with how closely Wallace’s theory of natural selection matched his own: ‘He could not have made a better short abstract! Even his terms now stand as heads of my chapters!’ Indeed, it was quite the opposite as he became and remained Darwin’s greatest fan and they became friends. It was entirely to Wallace’s credit that he showed no resentment about this. Darwin’s masterpiece of a book, The Origin of Species, came out the following year.įrom that time on, Darwin overshadowed Wallace and it has usually been his name alone that is associated with the theory of evolution by natural selection, even to the extent of its being called Darwinian theory. Unbeknown to Wallace, Darwin had been working on the very same theory for some two decades, but had yet to publish his thoughts.ĭarwin sought the advice of his friends, who determined that their ideas should be presented at a meeting of the Linnean Society in London. Wallace immediately wrote to someone he knew was interested in the self-same subject, Charles Darwin. It’s the sort of huge, ground-breaking idea that makes you wake in a cold sweat. In his fever dream he came to understand how species evolved – they changed because the fittest individuals survived and reproduced, passing their advantageous characteristics on to their offspring. One day in 1858, while feverish and confined to his hut on the island of Ternate (now in Indonesia), Wallace came to a startling conclusion. Through natural selection these can then be transmitted through generations and lead in turn to the creation of species, contributing to the biodiversity of the planet. This variation means that some individuals have traits better suited to the environment than others and over time, these advantageous traits become more common in the population. Two robins in the garden, say might look the same but there will be variations. So what is natural selection? It is the process through which populations of living organisms adapt and change. Butterflies collected by Wallaceīut Alfred Russel Wallace’s greatest claim to fame was having the revolutionary idea of evolution by natural selection entirely independently of Charles Darwin. He had so many labels he might have gainfully have invented a label machine for his own use – he was an avid and much travelled explorer, an inveterate collector, a glaciologist, an accomplished naturalist, skilled amateur geographer, keen anthropologist and political commentator. But the scientific world got to hear about them first from Darwin, and so he gets the credit.īorn 200 years ago this week, Wallace was much more than a scientist. The Usk-born scientist came up with a theory about natural selection at the same time as Darwin and, indeed, sent his pioneering ideas to him by letter. The name Alfred Russel Wallace is certainly not as well known as that of his contemporary Charles Darwin and yet he very much deserves to be. Alfred Russel Wallace & letters Credit: Wellcome Images Creative Commons Attribution licence CC BY 4.0
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