He was undoubtedly one of the greatest natural history explorers of the 19th century. He concluded that the Earth was the only planet in the solar system that could possibly support life, mainly because it was the only one in which water could exist in the liquid phase. [138][142], Spiritualism appealed to many educated Victorians who no longer found traditional religious doctrine, such as that of the Church of England, acceptable yet were unsatisfied with the completely materialistic and mechanical view of the world that was increasingly emerging from 19th-century science. [10] However, some historians have questioned this because neither of his parents was Welsh, his family only briefly lived in Monmouthshire, the Welsh people Wallace knew in his childhood considered him to be English, and because Wallace himself consistently referred to himself as English rather than Welsh (even when writing about his time in Wales). It was widely discussed, but not generally accepted by leading naturalists, and was considered to have radical, even revolutionary connotations. There he attended Hertford Grammar School until financial difficulties forced his family to withdraw him in 1836 when he was aged 14.[7]. Darwin had already shown his theory to their mutual friend Joseph Hooker and now, for the first time, he spelt out the full details of natural selection to Lyell. cept (kŏn′sĕpt′) n. 1. In 1867, Darwin wrote to Wallace about a problem in explaining how some caterpillars could have evolved conspicuous colour schemes. Shortly afterwards, Wallace became a spiritualist. Alfred Russel Wallace, British humanist, naturalist, geographer, and social critic. From 1854 to 1862, age 31 to 39, Wallace travelled through the Malay Archipelago or East Indies (now Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia), to collect specimens for sale and to study natural history. Take advantage of our Presidents' Day bonus! For the painter, see, British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist, Exploration and study of the natural world, Differences between Darwin's and Wallace's ideas on natural selection, Application of theory to humans, and role of teleology in evolution, Assessment of Wallace's role in history of evolutionary theory. November 2013 also marked the debut of The Animated Life of A. R. Wallace, a paper-puppet animation film dedicated to Wallace's centennial. Wallace's essay was presented to the Linnean Society of London on 1 July 1858, along with excerpts from an essay which Darwin had disclosed privately to Hooker in 1847 and a letter Darwin had written to Asa Gray in 1857.[79]. Wallace describes how he discovered natural selection as follows: It then occurred to me that these causes or their equivalents are continually acting in the case of animals also; and as animals usually breed much more quickly than does mankind, the destruction every year from these causes must be enormous in order to keep down the numbers of each species, since evidently they do not increase regularly from year to year, as otherwise the world would long ago have been crowded with those that breed most quickly. When this was destroyed, the heavy tropical rains soon washed away the soil, and has left a vast expanse of bare rock or sterile clay. Alfred Russel Wallace was a key contributor to the theory of evolution and the theory of natural selection. Monograph on Indonesian butterfly family with discussion of different kinds of variability including individual variation, polymorphic forms, geographical races, variation influenced by local conditions, and closely allied species. "[50], In 1898, Wallace published a book entitled The Wonderful Century: Its Successes and Its Failures about developments in the 19th century. Furthermore, under such conditions, natural selection would favour the development of barriers to hybridisation, as individuals that avoided hybrid matings would tend to have more fit offspring, and thus contribute to the reproductive isolation of the two incipient species. Noting the complex interactions between vegetation and climate, he warned that the extensive clearing of rainforest for coffee cultivation in Ceylon (now called Sri Lanka) and India would adversely impact the climate in those countries and lead to their impoverishment due to soil erosion. A general idea or understanding of something: the concept of inertia; the concept of free will. Alfred Wallace was born in the Welsh village of Llanbadoc, near Usk, Monmouthshire. Wallace thus answered the question he had posed in his earlier paper on the monkeys of the Amazon river basin. Although it contained no mention of any possible mechanisms for evolution, this paper foreshadowed the momentous paper he would write three years later. Though today in Wales, Monmouthshire's status was ambiguous at this time, considered by some as part of England. Alfred Russel Wallace may not be well known outside the scientific community, but his contributions to the theory of evolution were invaluable to Charles Darwin.In fact, Wallace and Darwin collaborated on the idea of natural selection and presented their findings jointly to the Linnean Society in London. Elected head of the biology section of the British Association in 1876. Yet his career eludes simple description or honorifics. Mary Anne was English; Thomas Wallace was probably of Scottish ancestry. Wallace’s wide-ranging interests—from socialism to spiritualism, from island biogeography to life on Mars, from evolution to land nationalization—stemmed from his profound concern with the moral, social, and political values of human life. Its feminine form is Alfreda and diminutives of Alfred include Al, Alf, Alfie, Fred, and Freddy.Today, Alfred … [33] However, to Wallace's great dismay, she broke off the engagement. [68], The paper shook Charles Lyell's belief that species were immutable. Their intention was to collect insects and other animal specimens in the Amazon Rainforest for their private collections, selling the duplicates to museums and collectors back in Britain in order to fund the trip. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. Alfred Russel Wallace’s formal education was limited to six years at a one-room grammar school in Hertford, England. Although some of Wallace's iconoclastic opinions in the ensuing years would test Darwin's patience, they remained on friendly terms for the rest of Darwin's life. Although Lyell could not agree, he urged Darwin to publish to establish priority. At the time, the germ theory of disease was very new and far from universally accepted. 1855: On the Law Which Has Regulated the Introduction of New Species. Darwin had come to believe that many conspicuous animal colour schemes were due to sexual selection. The three men decided to present two extracts of Darwin’s previous writings, along with Wallace’s paper, to the Linnean Society. Alfred Russel Wallace’s ideas regarding the origin of species paralleled those of Charles Darwin at the same time in history. [49] In a letter published by the Daily Mail in 1909, with aviation in its infancy, he advocated an international treaty to ban the military use of aircraft, arguing against the idea "...that this new horror is "inevitable," and that all we can do is to be sure and be in the front rank of the aerial assassins—for surely no other term can so fitly describe the dropping of, say, ten thousand bombs at midnight into an enemy's capital from an invisible flight of airships. [115] A number of reasons have been suggested for this lack of attention, including his modesty, his willingness to champion unpopular causes without regard for his own reputation, and the discomfort of much of the scientific community with some of his unconventional ideas. Episode one featured orangutans and flying frogs in Bailey's journey through Borneo. Contains speculation on how glaciation may have affected distribution of mountain flora in North America and Eurasia. 101, 154–55. [169][170] On 24 January, his portrait was unveiled in the Main Hall of the museum by Bill Bailey, a fervent admirer. p52: London; Roger & Robert Nicholson; 1966. [166] There has also been a web page created that is dedicated to Wallace scholarship. After a few months, Wallace found work as a civil engineer for a nearby firm that was working on a survey for a proposed railway in the Vale of Neath. Aside from scientific work, he was a social activist who was critical of what he considered to be an unjust social and economic system (capitalism) in 19th-century Britain. [104], In 1864, Wallace published a paper, "The Origin of Human Races and the Antiquity of Man Deduced from the Theory of 'Natural Selection'", applying the theory to humankind. Another commentator in the same edition said: "No apology need be made for the few literary or scientific follies of the author of that great book on the 'Malay Archipelago'. These won him acclaim from the Royal Geographical Society, which helped to fund his next collecting venture, in the Malay Archipelago. [173] The statue was donated by the A. R. Wallace Memorial Fund,[174] and was sculpted by Anthony Smith. [99] He revisited the topic at length in his 1889 book Darwinism. The East India Company took possession of the island in 1651, and about the year 1700 it began to be seen that the forests were fast diminishing, and required some protection. Like Darwin, Wallace did extensive fieldwork; first in the Amazon River basin, and then in the Malay Archipelago, where he identified the faunal divide now termed the Wallace Line, which separates the Indonesian archipelago into two distinct parts: a western portion in which the animals are largely of Asian origin, and an eastern portion where the fauna reflect Australasia. [111] However, many, including Huxley, Hooker, and Darwin himself, were critical of Wallace. [64] Wallace wrote to Henry Bates in 1845: I have a rather more favourable opinion of the 'Vestiges' than you appear to have. A set of 80 bird skeletons he collected in Indonesia and associated documentation can be found in the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology. Darwin demurred at first, then began writing up a species sketch of his continuing work in May 1856.[69]. [77] Wallace believed this and sent Darwin his February 1858 essay, "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type", asking Darwin to review it and pass it to Charles Lyell if he thought it worthwhile. [97] It was also a lifelong disagreement with Darwin about the importance of sexual selection. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. The second was the introduction of consciousness in the higher animals. [20] On 12 July 1852, Wallace embarked for the UK on the brig Helen. He married Annie Mitten (1848–1914), with whom he raised three children (Herbert died at age 4, whereas Violet and William survived their father), published a highly successful narrative of his journey, The Malay Archipelago: The Land of the Orang-Utan, and the Bird of Paradise (1869), and wrote Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection (1870). A recently discovered mechanism, which is likely to be more important than the others combined, is infections with viruses, which integrate their DNA into their hosts. For the rest of his life, he remained convinced that at least some séance phenomena were genuine, no matter how many accusations of fraud sceptics made or how much evidence of trickery was produced. The cause of this change is, however, very easily explained. He owned some income-generating property, but bad investments and failed business ventures resulted in a steady deterioration of the family's financial position. Such islands were characterised by a complete lack of terrestrial mammals and amphibians, and their inhabitants (except migratory birds and species introduced by humans) were typically the result of accidental colonisation and subsequent evolution. A commemorative medallion in his honour was unveiled at Westminster Abbey in 1915. His treatment of Mars in this book was brief, and in 1907, Wallace returned to the subject with a book Is Mars Habitable? [25] The standard author abbreviation Wallace is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.[186]. On the impact of European colonisation on the island of Saint Helena, he wrote: yet the general aspect of the island is now so barren and forbidding that some persons find it difficult to believe that it was once all green and fertile. [143][145], During the 1860s the stage magician John Nevil Maskelyne exposed the trickery of the Davenport brothers. Both Darwin and Wallace agreed on the importance of natural selection, and some of the factors responsible for it: competition between species and geographical isolation. Paper on natural selection sent by Wallace to Darwin. In The World of Life (1911) he wrote: These considerations should lead us to look upon all the works of nature, animate or inanimate, as invested with a certain sanctity, to be used by us but not abused, and never to be recklessly destroyed or defaced. Belief and Spiritualism", "Notes on the Growth of Opinion as to Obscure Psychical Phenomena During the Last Fifty Years", "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)", "Missing Link: Alfred Russel Wallace, Charles Darwin's neglected double", "Alfred Russel Wallace, the forgotten man of evolution, gets his moment", "Wallace100 – celebrating Alfred Russel Wallace's life and legacy", Bill Bailey's Jungle Hero: An audience with the sultan", Natural History Museum: David Attenborough unveils Wallace Statue, "Anthropology at the British Association (S120: 1866)", "Chronology of the Main Events in Wallace's Life", Monmouthshire (historic)#Ambiguity over status, The A. R. Wallace Correspondence Project Homepage, The Wallace Memorial Fund's gallery of Wallace-related images, Wallace Online. Facts about Alfred Russel Wallace 3: the financial situation. [46], Wallace wrote on other social and political topics including his support for women's suffrage, and repeatedly on the dangers and wastefulness of militarism. He provided maps showing factors, such as elevation of mountains, depths of oceans, and the character of regional vegetation, that affected the distribution of animals. [56] Several prominent British scientists formed a committee to have a medallion of Wallace placed in Westminster Abbey near where Darwin had been buried. He suggested the following scenario: When two populations of a species had diverged beyond a certain point, each adapted to particular conditions, hybrid offspring would be less adapted than either parent form and so natural selection would tend to eliminate the hybrids. Years later, in 1898, Wallace wrote a pamphlet, Vaccination a Delusion; Its Penal Enforcement a Crime, attacking the commission's findings. He became known for his views on scientific, social, and spiritualist subjects. In the autumn of 1846, John and he purchased a cottage near Neath, where they lived with their mother and sister Fanny (his father had died in 1843). 1857: On the Natural History of the Aru Islands. In November 1886, Wallace began a ten-month trip to the United States to give a series of popular lectures. Wallace, (born January 8, 1823, Usk, Monmouthshire, Wales—died November 7, 1913, Broadstone, Dorset, England), British humanist, naturalist, geographer, and social critic. Stately palm-trees rise, On every side, and numerous trees unknown. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. [14][15], During this period, he read avidly, exchanging letters with Bates about Robert Chambers' anonymously published evolutionary treatise Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, Charles Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle, and Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology.[16][17]. [59] During his work in the Amazon basin, he came to realise that geographical barriers—such as the Amazon and its major tributaries—often separated the ranges of closely allied species, and he included these observations in his 1853 paper "On the Monkeys of the Amazon". Wallace’s detailed observations of their habits are recorded in one of his first writing efforts, an essay on “the South Wales Farmer,” which is reproduced in his autobiography. Wegener is also called as the pioneer in polar research. [30] During the 1860s, Wallace wrote papers and gave lectures defending natural selection. It reviewed the book The Reign of Law by George Campbell, the 8th Duke of Argyll which aimed to refute natural selection. [171] On the BBC Two programme "Bill Bailey's Jungle Hero", first broadcast on 21 April 2013, Bailey revealed how Wallace cracked evolution by revisiting places where Wallace discovered exotic species. In writings and public appearances he opposed vaccination, eugenics, and vivisection while strongly supporting women’s rights and land nationalization. Darwin's social and scientific status was far greater than Wallace's, and it was unlikely that, without Darwin, Wallace's views on evolution would have been taken seriously. Wallace discussed how that difference affected flora and fauna. Alfred is a masculine given name of English origin, a modern descendant of the Anglo-Saxon name Ælfræd (Old English pronunciation: [ˈælfˌræːd]), formed from the Germanic words ælf, meaning elf, and ræd, meaning counsel. Several thousand of them represented species new to science. Wallace and Bates spent most of their first year collecting near Belém, then explored inland separately, occasionally meeting to discuss their findings. Darwin received the essay on 18 June 1858. [1] He is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection; his paper on the subject was jointly published with some of Charles Darwin's writings in 1858. [138][142] Among other prominent 19th-century intellectuals involved with spiritualism were the social reformer Robert Owen, who was one of Wallace's early idols,[144] the physicists William Crookes and Lord Rayleigh, the mathematician Augustus De Morgan, and the Scottish publisher Robert Chambers. Alfred Russel Wallace OM FRS (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and illustrator. 3. John Stuart Mill was impressed by remarks criticising English society that Wallace had included in The Malay Archipelago. The concept had been advocated by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Erasmus Darwin, and Robert Grant, among others. He sued Wallace and launched a campaign, which persisted for several years, of writing letters to various publications and to organisations of which Wallace was a member denouncing him as a swindler and a thief. [2], The cybernetician and anthropologist Gregory Bateson observed in the 1970s that, although writing it only as an example, Wallace had "probably said the most powerful thing that'd been said in the 19th Century". The Wallace family moved several times, from Inner London to the outer borough of Barking, to Grays in Essex, and then south to Dorking, Surrey, to the outer borough of Croydon, to Godalming, Surrey, then to Parkstone and finally Broadstone, both in Dorset. Historians and biographers have disagreed about which factors most influenced his adoption of spiritualism. Darwin was impressed by the idea. I see no escape from the conclusion that some spiritual being, acquainted with my mother's various aspects during life, produced these recognisable impressions on the plate. Wallace did months of research, consulted various experts, and produced his own scientific analysis of the Martian climate and atmospheric conditions. But he made bad investment and failed the business. He studied the languages and habits of the peoples he encountered; he collected butterflies, other insects, and birds; and he searched for clues to solve the mystery of the origin of plant and animal species. The Jordeson's provisions were strained by the unexpected passengers, but after a difficult passage on very short rations the ship finally reached its destination on 1 October 1852. Facts about Alfred Russel Wallace 4: education. Recently, he has become a less obscure figure with the publication of several book-length biographies on him, as well as anthologies of his writings. [2] This prompted Darwin to publish On the Origin of Species. [75] In the first letter, dated 1 May 1857, Darwin commented that Wallace's letter of 10 October which he had recently received, as well as Wallace's paper "On the Law which has regulated the Introduction of New Species" of 1855, showed that they thought alike, with similar conclusions, and said that he was preparing his own work for publication in about two years time. Paper on the geography and possible geographic history of Indonesia with concluding remarks on importance of biogeography and biodiversity that are frequently cited in modern conservation circles. This he is said to have done in an underhanded manner, and I well remember the indignation it gave rise to in the B.A. His paper detailing the natural selection mechanism was published together with writings by Charles Darwin in 1858, setting the basis for our understanding of how species evolve over time. He was also awarded honorary doctorates from the Universities of Dublin (1882) and Oxford (1889) and won election to the Royal Society (1893). [96] Bateson revisited the topic in his 1979 book Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, and other scholars have continued to explore the connection between natural selection and systems theory.[95]. [162] Wallace and other anti-vaccinationists pointed out that vaccination, which at the time was often done in a sloppy and unsanitary manner, could be dangerous. [71] His autobiography says that he was on the island of Ternate at the time; but historians have said that based on his journal he was on the island of Gilolo. Smith, Charles & Beccaloni, George [Eds.] Unlike some of his contemporaries in the British scientific community, such as Darwin and Charles Lyell, he had no family wealth to fall back on, and he was unsuccessful in finding a long-term salaried position, receiving no regular income until he was awarded a small government pension, through Darwin's efforts, in 1881. Others have noted that another difference was that Wallace appeared to have envisioned natural selection as a kind of feedback mechanism keeping species and varieties adapted to their environment (now called 'stabilizing", as opposed to 'directional' selection). What touched those who knew him was his compassion, his humanness and sympathy, and his lack of pretense or acquired pride. It has been suggested by one biographer that the emotional shock he had received a few months earlier, when his first fiancée broke their engagement, contributed to his receptiveness to spiritualism. 1863 Seriously ill, consults many medical men about his symptoms. 1863: On the Physical Geography of the Malay Archipelago. [72] From 1858 to 1861, he rented a house on Ternate from the Dutchman Maarten Dirk van Renesse van Duivenbode, which he used as a base for expeditions to other islands such as Gilolo.[73]. Among these were two extraordinary articles dealing with the origin of new species. On the Origin of Species may never have been written, let alone published, if it had not been for Alfred Russel Wallace, another British naturalist who independently proposed a strikingly similar theory in 1858. The Natural History Museum, London, co-ordinated commemorative events for the Wallace centenary worldwide in the 'Wallace100' project in 2013. [122] Extending the system developed by Sclater for birds—which divided the earth into six separate geographic regions for describing species distribution—to cover mammals, reptiles and insects as well, Wallace created the basis for the zoogeographic regions still in use today. Biographical Notes of. [54][55], On 7 November 1913, Wallace died at home in the country house he called Old Orchard, which he had built a decade earlier. He criticised the UK's free trade policies for the negative impact they had on working-class people. Browse Artists Alphabetically Artist Names Beginning Complete List A-Z : Maria A'Becket - American Painter Hans von Aachen - German Painter Alvar Aalto - Finnish Architect Magdalena Abakanowicz - Polish Sculptor Masseot Abaquesne - French Potter Riza-i Abbasi - Persian Painter Louise Abbema - French Painter … Thus it might contribute to the development of new species. Around the start of 1856, he told Darwin about Wallace's paper, as did Edward Blyth who thought it "Good! 'The Abbey Scientists' Hall, A.R. His advocacy of spiritualism and his belief in a non-material origin for the higher mental faculties of humans strained his relationship with some members of the scientific establishment. [8][9] By the end of 1843, William's business had declined due to difficult economic conditions, and Wallace, at the age of 20, left in January. In 1881, Wallace was elected as the first president of the newly formed Land Nationalisation Society. Vaguely thinking over the enormous and constant destruction which this implied, it occurred to me to ask the question, why do some die and some live? Episode two featured birds of paradise. His death was widely reported in the press. Ill health continues until spring 1866. See Synonyms at idea. Corvus enca celebensis, Sula Islands, registered in 1861 at a forerunner of Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Toxorhamphus novaeguineae novaeguineae, Misool, Raja Ampat Islands, 1865, Pitohui ferrugineus leucorhynchus, Waigeo, West-Papua, no year, Nectarinia jugularis clementiae, Seram Island, 1865, "Alfred Wallace" redirects here. For a long time, he was treated as a relatively obscure figure in the history of science. In a letter to his brother-in-law in 1861, Wallace wrote: I remain an utter disbeliever in almost all that you consider the most sacred truths. Omissions? Wallace's comments on environment grew more urgent later in his career. When the £200 annual pension was awarded in 1881, it helped to stabilise Wallace's financial position by supplementing the income from his writings.[39]. by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace were the concepts of variation and natural selection. Lyell was more impressed and opened a notebook on species, in which he grappled with the consequences, particularly for human ancestry. Charles Lyell endorsed Wallace's views on human evolution rather than Darwin's. This idea came to be known as the Wallace effect,[101] later referred to as reinforcement. For approximately 8 of the next 10 years, Wallace surveyed and mapped in Bedfordshire and then in Wales. Wallace published 21 books, and the list of his articles, essays, and letters in periodicals contains more than 700 items. In 1889, Wallace published the book Darwinism as a response to the scientific critics of natural selection. See, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, pure paper money system, not backed by silver or gold, On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type, connecting North America and South America, commemorative events for the Wallace centenary, "Homing In: Alfred Russel Wallace's Homes in Britain (1852 to 1913)", "Responses to Questions Frequently Asked About Wallace: Was Wallace actually a Welshman, as seems to be increasingly claimed? [91][92] Some historians, notably Peter J. Bowler, have suggested the possibility that in the paper he mailed to Darwin, Wallace did not discuss selection of individual variations but group selection. Herbert left soon thereafter (dying two years later from yellow fever), but Spruce, like Bates, would spend over ten years collecting in South America.[19]. The first was the creation of life from inorganic matter. One historian of science has pointed out that, through both private correspondence and published works, Darwin and Wallace exchanged knowledge and stimulated each other's ideas and theories over an extended period. [102] Wallace had suggested to Darwin that natural selection could play a role in preventing hybridisation in private correspondence as early as 1868, but had not worked it out to this level of detail. [143] However, several scholars who have researched Wallace's views in depth have emphasised that, for him, spiritualism was a matter of science and philosophy rather than religious belief. In 2002, a historian of science published a quantitative analysis of Wallace's publications. Nevertheless, he managed to save some of his notes before his rescue and return journey. Hereditary variants were thought to arise naturally in populations, and then these were either selected for or against by the contemporary environmental conditions. He discussed how isolation affected evolution and how that could result in the preservation of classes of animals, such as the lemurs of Madagascar that were remnants of once widespread continental faunas. Alfred Wegener was born on November 1, 1880, in Germany’s capital city, Berlin.
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