Alfred Russel Wallace
Biologist · 1823-1913 · Biology, stage 3: Meet the biologists
Arrived at natural selection independently and founded the study of species distribution.
Overview
Wallace was a working collector who funded himself by selling specimens, first in the Amazon and then across the Malay Archipelago. In 1858, ill with fever in the Moluccas, he wrote out the mechanism of natural selection and posted it to Darwin, which forced the joint reading of their papers at the Linnean Society that year. He is also the founder of biogeography: he identified the sharp faunal boundary through the Indonesian archipelago now called the Wallace Line, and he argued that distribution patterns are evidence of history rather than of climate alone. He diverged from Darwin in denying that selection could account for the human mind. Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection is the shortest route into his thinking; The Malay Archipelago is the better book to read for pleasure.
Where to start reading
Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection 1870
A collection of his essays including the 1858 Ternate paper that set out natural selection independently of Darwin.
The Malay Archipelago 1869
The narrative of eight years collecting across what is now Indonesia and Malaysia, and the source of the faunal boundary named after him. The Gutenberg text linked here is volume one of two.
Darwinism 1889
Wallace's own systematic exposition of natural selection, written thirty years after the Origin and answering the objections raised in between.
Part of
Sources
- Alfred Russel Wallace Wikipedia
- Who was Alfred Russel Wallace? Natural History Museum, London
- The Linnean Society of London The Linnean Society
