Wallace, Alfred Russel (1823–1913)

Ian Tattersall & Kenneth Mowbray

The independent codiscoverer, with Charles Darwin, of the principle of evolution by natural selection, Wallace was born near Usk, Wales. Even as he trained for a career as a surveyor, Wallace developed a lively interest in natural history, and after he moved to England in 1844 a fortunate meeting with another amateur naturalist, Henry Walter Bates, led to organizing a joint expedition to the Amazon Basin (1848–1853) to collect natural history specimens. Tragedy struck on the way home when the ship on which Wallace was traveling caught fire and his collections were lost; but the books that resulted from Wallace's explorations caught the attention of the Royal Geographical Society, which, along with insurance monies, helped fund a further expedition to the Malay Archipelago (broadly, Indonesia) in 1854–1862. This proved to be one of the great natural ...

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