8/25/2023 0 Comments Alfred russel wallace seminal work![]() Large numbers of obituary notices appeared in newspapers and other publications worldwide which paid tribute to him. During his ten month lecture tour of the United States of America and Canada in 18, his company was sought by the principal scientists and writers of the day, and President Cleveland himself gave Wallace a tour of the White House.īy the time of his death in 1913 Wallace was the world’s most famous contemporary scientist. Wallace was highly regarded by his contemporaries and he met and corresponded with many of the leading figures in science, politics and literature both in Europe and North America. A materialist until his 40s, he gradually developed a belief in naturalistic, evolutionary spiritualism.ĭuring Wallace's lifetime he was widely credited as being the co-discoverer of the process of evolution by natural selection and he was duly honoured for his role in its discovery by being awarded the Darwin–Wallace and Linnean Gold Medals of the Linnean Society of London the Copley, Darwin and Royal Medals of the Royal Society (Britain's premier scientific body) and the Order of Merit (awarded by the ruling Monarch as the highest civilian honour of Great Britain). He strongly believed in the rights of the ordinary person, was a socialist, a proponent of land nationalisation, and an anti-vaccinationist (for rational reasons). He was anti-slavery, anti-eugenics, anti-vivisection, anti-militarism, anti-Imperialism, a conservationist and an advocate of woman's rights. Wallace was a man with an extraordinary breadth of interests who was actively engaged with many of the big questions and important issues of his day. Beyond this, Wallace is regarded as the pre-eminent collector and field biologist of tropical regions of the 19th century, and his book The Malay Archipelago (which was Joseph Conrad’s favourite bedside reading) is one of the most celebrated travel writings of that century and has never been out of print. His pioneering work on evolutionary biogeography (the science that seeks to explain the geographical distribution of organisms) led to him becoming recognised as that subject’s ‘father’. Wallace made enduring scholarly contributions to subjects as diverse as glaciology, land reform, anthropology, ethnography, epidemiology, and astrobiology. Together Wallace and Darwin proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection in 1858, and their prolific subsequent work laid the foundations of modern evolutionary biology - and much more besides. His seminal contributions to biology rival those of his friend and colleague Charles Darwin, though he is far less well known. Alfred Russel Wallace OM, LLD, DCL, FRS, FLS (1823 - 1913), one of the greatest scientists of all time.
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