Wallace

Alfred Russel Wallace OM, FRS (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist. more...

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He did extensive fieldwork first in the Amazon River basin, and then in the Malay Archipelago, where he identified the Wallace line dividing the fauna of Australia from that of Asia. He is best known for independently proposing a theory of natural selection which prompted Charles Darwin to publish his own more developed and researched theory sooner than intended. Wallace was also one of the leading evolutionary thinkers of the 19th century who made a number of other contributions to the development of evolutionary theory, including the concept of warning colouration in animals, and the Wallace effect. He was also considered the 19th century’s leading expert on the geographical distribution of animal species and is sometimes called the \"father of biogeography\".

Wallace was strongly attracted to unconventional ideas. His advocacy of Spiritualism and his belief in a non-material origin for the higher mental faculties of humans strained his relationship with the scientific establishment, especially with other early proponents of evolution. He was critical of what he considered to be an unjust social and economic system in 19th century Britain, and was one of the first prominent scientists to raise concerns over the environmental impact of human activity.

Biography

Early life

Wallace was born in the village of Llanbadoc, near Usk, Monmouthshire, Wales. He was the eighth of nine children of Thomas Vere Wallace and Mary Anne Greenell. His mother was from a respectable middle-class English family from Hertford. Thomas Wallace was of Scottish ancestry and his family, like many Scottish Wallaces, claimed a connection to William Wallace, the leader of a 13th-century rising against England. Thomas Wallace received a law degree but never actually practiced law. He inherited some income-generating property, but bad investments and failed business ventures resulted in a steady deterioration of the family's financial position.

When Wallace was five years old, his family moved to Hertford, north of London, where he attended Hertford Grammar School until financial difficulties forced his family to withdraw him in 1836. Wallace then moved to London to live and work with his older brother John, a 19-year-old apprentice builder. This was a stopgap measure until William, his oldest brother, was ready to take him on as an apprentice surveyor. While there he attended lectures and read books at the London Mechanics' Institute, where he was exposed to the radical political ideas of social reformers like Robert Owen and Thomas Paine. He left London in 1837 to live with William and work as his apprentice for six years. At the end of 1839 they moved to Kington near the Welsh border before eventually settling at Neath in Glamorgan, and between 1840 and 1843, Wallace did surveying work in the countryside of the west of England and Wales. By the end of 1843 William's business had declined due to difficult economic conditions, and Wallace left in January.

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