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Portrait of Alfred Russel Wallace

Science · Biology

Alfred Russel Wallace

1823–1913 · British (Welsh-born)

Natural history; biogeography; evolutionary biology

Alfred Russel Wallace was a naturalist, explorer and collector who independently conceived the theory of evolution by natural selection. His 1858 essay sent to Charles Darwin from the Malay Archipelago prompted the joint presentation of their ideas at the Linnean Society that July, and Darwin's rush to publish On the Origin of Species. A founder of biogeography, he identified the faunal divide in Indonesia now called the Wallace Line.

How to spot them

  • ▸The Ternate essay of 1858 that forced Darwin's hand
  • ▸The Malay Archipelago (1869); the Wallace Line between Bali and Lombok
  • ▸Collected in the Amazon with Henry Walter Bates; lost his specimens when his ship caught fire
  • ▸Father of biogeography; also a spiritualist and anti-vaccination campaigner

Key discoveries & works

The Ternate essay, 'On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type' (1858)

Sent to Darwin from the Moluccas; read with extracts from Darwin at the Linnean Society on 1 July 1858

The Sarawak Law paper (1855)

'On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species', written in Borneo: new species arise close to related existing ones

The Malay Archipelago (1869)

Classic travel and natural history account of his 1854–1862 expedition, dedicated to Darwin

Faunal boundary between Asian and Australian animals, running between Bali and Lombok (1859–1863)

Now known as the Wallace Line (a name given by Thomas Henry Huxley)

Island Life (1880)

Study of the distribution of animals and plants on islands

The Geographical Distribution of Animals (1876)

Two-volume work dividing the world into zoogeographic regions

Key ideas

  • Natural selection, reached independently of Darwin while ill with fever in the Moluccas
  • Biogeography: the distribution of species reflects geological and evolutionary history
  • The Wallace effect: natural selection may favour barriers to hybridisation between diverging populations
  • Argued that natural selection could not fully explain the human mind, a view Darwin rejected

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born in Usk, Monmouthshire; died at Broadstone, Dorset
  • •Explored the Amazon from 1848 with Henry Walter Bates; on his voyage home in 1852 the ship Helen caught fire and most of his collection was lost
  • •Collected over 125,000 specimens in the Malay Archipelago
  • •Wrote a book titled Darwinism (1889) in support of natural selection
  • •Awarded the Order of Merit and the Royal Society's Copley Medal in 1908, and the first Darwin–Wallace Medal of the Linnean Society
  • •In 1870 he won a wager against a flat-Earth believer, John Hampden, with an experiment on the Bedford Level canal
  • •Campaigned for land nationalisation and was a committed spiritualist

Drill it — 7 cards

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Sources