Alfred Russel Wallace

English biologist

• Born: January 8, 1823; Usk, Wales
• Died: November 7, 1913; Broadstone, England

Nineteenth-century naturalist and explorer Alfred Russel Wallace developed a theory of evolution based on the principle of natural selection at the same time as fellow investigator and theorist Charles Darwin. Wallace also made significant contributions in the field of biogeography.

Primary field: Biology

Specialty: Evolutionary biology

Early Life

Alfred Russel Wallace was born in Usk, southeast Wales, and was raised in Hertford, where he attended the Hertford School. At age fourteen, Wallace went to live with an older brother in London, where he apprenticed as a surveyor. He developed his skills in math and science and also bore witness to social injustice while traveling across the country to surveying sites with his brother. Influenced by the theories of social reformer Robert Owen, Wallace became involved with Mechanics Institutes, which provided education to working men. He also read numerous scientific books, including Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology, which, contrary to creationist theories of the period, posited that the Earth had been forming for millennia.

In 1844, Wallace accepted a teaching post at Leicester. While in Leicester, he became interested in mesmerism, a type of social science hypnotism developed by German physician Franz Mesmer. Wallace also became interested in travel literature, specifically the work of scientists and naturalists who had visited remote corners of the globe and reported their findings on the varieties of animal and plant life in these regions. Wallace became acquainted with Henry Bates, who would later become a renowned naturalist and explorer. Although Wallace continued to work as a surveyor after the unexpected death of his brother, his interest in science remained high. In 1845, he read Charles Darwin’s exploration memoir The Voyage of the Beagle, as well asRobert Chambers’s Vestiges of Creation, which proposed that species were not static but developed gradually over time. Wallace made the decision to become a naturalist and planned a journey up the Amazon River in South America. He set off for Brazil with Bates in April 1848.

Life’s Work

Wallace’s trip to South America transformed him from an amateur to a professional scientist. For four years, he traveled the Amazon and its tributaries, collecting and observing the natural life on the Rio Negro. He was methodical in gathering specimens of the birds and insects he found there, preparing them carefully and occasionally shipping samples to an agent in England. Throughout his explorations, Wallace planned a series of publications. He kept extensively detailed journals about his discoveries. Wallace also accumulated a collection of specimens to bring back to England, where he intended to sell them in order to fund future work. However, this collection and much of his paperwork was lost when the ship transporting him back to England in 1852 caught fire and sank. Wallace managed to find a lifeboat and survive.

Wallace did not let the shipwreck of 1852 set him back. Upon returning to England, he began writing about his travels, producing two books that were well received by the scientific community. He was introduced to a number of influential scientists who saw promise in the field studies he had done. Within this community of scientists, Wallace sought support for another expedition to the East. In March 1854, he set out for the Malay Archipelago, where he spent eight years conducting observations and collecting specimens. Wallace’s work in Southeastern Asia established his reputation as one of the century’s premier natural scientists.

Years of study had convinced Wallace that evolution, not creationism, best explained the extensive variations among the many species of animal life he had observed during his years as an explorer. In 1855, he published a paper that made public his commitment to the theory of evolution. Three years later, Wallace came up with an explanation for the mechanism that drove this evolutionary process. It appeared to him that, through a process of natural selection, organisms that had more effectively adapted to their environments were more capable of surviving and reproducing. In February 1858, Wallace drafted a paper outlining his theory and sent it to Charles Darwin in England. Darwin, who had reached the same conclusion independently, arranged for a joint public reading of Wallace’s paper and one of his own in April 1858.

Wallace was not in England when controversy erupted over the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), which laid out the theory of evolution in detail. He continued working in the Malay Archipelago, recording his observations about natural life in the region and taking notes for a series of publications discussing his theories about how animal species came to be distributed around the globe. After returning to England in 1862, Wallace spent the next fifteen years as a public champion of evolution, while composing a series of works explaining his own ideas about geographical species distribution. His book The Malay Archipelago (1869) was hailed as one of the most important scientific travelogues of the age, and The Geographical Distribution of Animals (1875) became the standard work in zoogeography for nearly a century. In 1866, Wallace married Annie Mitten. The couple had three children.

In the early 1860s, Wallace began to fall out of favor with some in the scientific community over his support for the practice of spiritualism. Inspired by his interest in mesmerism, Wallace attended séances and wrote about the possibility of contacting the dead. Though he realized he could produce no proof sufficient to convince fellow scientists that such contact was possible, Wallace argued that failure to find scientific evidence did not automatically signify that such communication was impossible. An even more serious breach between Wallace and fellow scientists occurred over his profession that, while evolution explained changes among subhuman species, the development of the human brain and of human morality was the result of intervention into the natural order of evolution by a higher intelligence. Many saw this theory as nothing more than a reversion to creationism.

Later in his life, Wallace became an active proponent of a number of radical social causes. He introduced land reform plan that called for the government to take over ownership of all land. He also joined a group opposing mandatory smallpox vaccination. Nonetheless, he remained an active author, publishing a number of scientific studies, including an influential collection of essays entitled Darwinism in 1889, and a two-volume autobiography in 1905.

Despite Wallace’s controversial support of human exceptionalism, the scientific community recognized his contributions to the advancement of evolutionary theory. He was awarded the Royal Medal in 1868, elected a Fellow of the Linnaean Society in 1872, and awarded an Honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree by Oxford University in 1889. In 1908, King Edward VII conferred on him the Order of Merit. Following his death in 1913, Wallace’s reputation waned and Darwin earned notoriety as the sole father of evolutionary biology. Only at the beginning of the twenty-first century was his reputation restored by scientists who recognized his important contributions across the spectrum of the biological sciences.

Impact

The development of the theory of natural selection revolutionized the study of biology and led to advancements in other fields such as paleontology and genetics. Additionally, while Thomas Henry Huxley became known as the most influential champion of Darwin’s theory of evolution, Wallace was equally active and influential in speaking and writing in defense of natural selection in the face of many detractors. Even after he fell out with Darwin over the issue of human origins, he continued to publish works in support of Darwin’s ideas about evolution.

Wallace was a leading figure in providing animals and insects for study by naturalists in England. Over the course of his career, he collected more than 120,000 prepared specimens and living animals for zoos, museums, and scholars. His pioneering work in constructing a theory to explain the geographical distribution of animals earned him recognition as the father of zoogeography. Wallace’s theory that migration occurred over land masses that were once connected but were later separated by large bodies of water was proven feasible in 1915, when German geophysicist Alfred Wegener developed the concept of continental drift.

Wallace also made contributions in the areas of exobiology, animal mimicry and coloration, and bird migration. While his work as a social reformer did not have the same impact as his efforts in science, many of his ideas, including the encouragement of employee buyouts and payment of double wages for overtime work, became important to labor relations activities in the twentieth century.

Bibliography

Fichman, Martin. An Elusive Victorian: The Evolution of Alfred Russel Wallace. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010. Print. Examines Wallace’s major intellectual and cultural views and activities. Explains how Wallace’s pursuit of scientific knowledge coalesced with his social, political, ethical, and theological interests.

Raby, Peter. Alfred Russel Wallace: A Life. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001. Print. Detailed biography providing extensive discussion of Wallace’s travels and analysis of his contributions to science and social policy.

Shermer, Michael. In Darwin’s Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace. New York: Oxford UP, 2011. Print. Psychological study of Wallace, stressing his iconoclasm and providing insight into the methodologies that led him to embrace scientific study, social activism, and spiritualism with equal vigor.

Slotten, Ross. The Heretic in Darwin’s Court: A Life of Alfred Russel Wallace. New York: Columbia UP, 2004. Print. Presents a comprehensive biography of Wallace, including a discussion of his involvement in various social and political causes and his lifelong interest in spiritualism.

Smith, Charles H., and George Beccaloni, eds. Natural Selection and Beyond: The Intellectual Legacy of Alfred Russel Wallace. New York: Oxford UP, 2008. Print. Presents twenty essays by leading scientists exploring aspects of Wallace’s career and contributions to evolutionary biology.