Alfred Russel Wallace: Darwin's co-discoverer - a forgotten hero

The Times
February 12, 2009
: Darwin's co-discoverer
A little-known naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, also proposed the theory of natural selection - and this spurred Charles Darwin on to publish his great book.
Anjana Ahuja

In the 1850s, a bearded Victorian naturalist set sail for exotic shores, determined to discover the origin of species. He returned to England laden with once-living bounty - mostly birds, beetles and butterflies - which he dispersed, for modest sums, to museums and cultured gentlemen. He retained specimens for himself, the study of which furnished such papers as On the Law that has regulated the Introduction of New Species. His investigations would culminate, in 1858, in an explanation of evolution through natural selection.

This is not Charles Darwin, but Alfred Russel Wallace, who shared joint billing with Darwin on the paper that would set the elder scientist on the road to fame. The stirringly titled On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection, read out to the Linnean Society in Piccadilly on July 1, 1858, raised the controversial idea of natural selection. This argued that favourable traits in a species would result in greater reproductive success for the lucky ones that carried them, and these traits - such as a long neck for eating leaves from high branches - would gradually spread. This might slowly lead to new species (say, giraffes).

The story of what happened afterwards to Darwin and Wallace might well have been entitled “On the Tendency of Co-Discoverers of a Theory to Depart Indefinitely in Their Fortunes”. Darwin, whose reputation was sealed a year later with the publication of On the Origin of Species, lies entombed in Westminster Abbey, metaphorically rubbing shoulders with prime ministers and royalty. The bicentenary of his birth is being marked in grand fashion this week. Wallace lies in a small Dorset graveyard, flanked until recently by unchecked leylandii, his name and legacy largely unfamiliar beyond his family and a coterie of scientists and historians. More