Introduction

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823 - 1913) was a naturalist, collector, social commentator, family man and spiritualist. It was his work as a naturalist that made him one of the most famous scientists of his era. As a young man Wallace was interested in plants. After becoming friends with the naturalist Henry Walter Bates, he turned his attention to insects and together they began their exciting collecting careers.

After spending four years in the Amazon Rainforest in South America, Wallace travelled around the Malay Archipelago for eight years, searching for the mechanism of evolution and new species of animals to send back to England. It was during this trip that he made his greatest contribution to science. In February 1858, weak with fever, Wallace had a flash of inspiration and discovered natural selection, the process believed to drive most evolutionary change of life on Earth. When he was well enough he wrote an essay detailing his ideas and sent it to Charles Darwin for comment. Wallace's article plus some of Darwin's unpublished writings on the subject were presented at a meeting of the Linnean Society of London on the 1st July 1858. Their co-authored paper On the Tendency of Species to Form Varieties and On the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection was published a few months later and preceded Darwin’s seminal work On the Origin of Species by one year.

Wallace spent many years popularising the idea of evolution through articles, books and lectures. He also wrote on a broad range of other topics and made many significant and lasting contributions to biology, geography, geology, anthropology and even economics. He died at his home in Broadstone, Dorset, aged 90.