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. He grew up in rural Wales. Then due to the financial difficulties, he had to leave school. 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 financial struggle, Alfred left in January 1843. Being unemployed for a while, he found a job at the Collegiate School in Leicester, where he read a lot at the library. In 1844, Alfred made friends with a naturalist, Henry Walter Bates, who inspired Alfred. Thus, Alfred began to show interest in biology. Later in 1848, the two left for the Amazon and started their adventures.

Contributions

Alfred and Bates split up after several ventures. In order to study the unknown regions of the Amazon River, Wallace learned local languages and habits. Meanwhile, he had been traveling, collecting, exploring, and writing for four years. Although many of his collection were missing for the ship returning to Britain was on fire, some of his notes were preserved, with which he published several scientific articles, two books, and a map of the Negro River. Thus, the Royal Geographical Society supported his next venture in the Malay Archipelago in 1854.

The Malay Archipelago

Over eight years in Malay Archipelago, he accumulated approximate 125,000 biological specimens, including insects, birds, mammal, reptile specimens and thousands of new species. There Wallace also noted an imaginary line, later known as Wallace's Line. This line divided animals in different regions of Malay Archipelago. When returning home, a travel book, The Malay Archipelago, was published, introducing the islands through Wallace’s detailed description and also predicting the negative impacts of modern civilization on the natural environment.

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 thought of Thomas Malthus’s An Essay on the Principle of Population and developed the theory 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

As a spiritualist, Wallace was different from other scientists. Wallace started to show interest in spiritualism in 1865; then he reviewed the literature on this topic and accepted it. Spiritualism was also a subject of his books and papers. It brought considerable controversy to him in the academic field, but Wallace ignored it and continued to express his opinions about spiritualism.

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.