Alfred Russel Wallace Popular Books

Alfred Russel Wallace Biography & Facts

Alfred Russel Wallace (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was an English naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and illustrator. He independently conceived the theory of evolution through natural selection; his 1858 paper on the subject was published that year alongside extracts from Charles Darwin's earlier writings on the topic. It spurred Darwin to set aside the "big species book" he was drafting and quickly write an abstract of it, which was published in 1859 as On the Origin of Species. Wallace did extensive fieldwork, starting in the Amazon River basin. He then did fieldwork 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. He was considered the 19th century's leading expert on the geographical distribution of animal species, and is sometimes called the "father of biogeography", or more specifically of zoogeography. Wallace was one of the leading evolutionary thinkers of the 19th century, working on warning coloration in animals and reinforcement (sometimes known as the Wallace effect), a way that natural selection could contribute to speciation by encouraging the development of barriers against hybridisation. Wallace's 1904 book Man's Place in the Universe was the first serious attempt by a biologist to evaluate the likelihood of life on other planets. He was one of the first scientists to write a serious exploration of whether there was life on Mars. Aside from scientific work, he was a social activist, critical of what he considered to be an unjust social and economic system in 19th-century Britain. His advocacy of spiritualism and his belief in a non-material origin for the higher mental faculties of humans strained his relationship with other scientists. He was one of the first prominent scientists to raise concerns over the environmental impact of human activity. He wrote prolifically on both scientific and social issues; his account of his adventures and observations during his explorations in Southeast Asia, The Malay Archipelago, was first published in 1869. It continues to be both popular and highly regarded. Biography Early life Alfred Russel Wallace was born on 8 January 1823 in Llanbadoc, Monmouthshire. He was the eighth of nine children born to Mary Anne Wallace (née Greenell) and Thomas Vere Wallace. His mother was English, while his father was of Scottish ancestry. His family claimed a connection to William Wallace, a leader of Scottish forces during the Wars of Scottish Independence in the 13th century. Wallace's father graduated in law but never practised it. He owned some income-generating property, but bad investments and failed business ventures resulted in a steady deterioration of the family's financial position. Wallace's mother was from a middle-class family of Hertford, to which place his family moved when Wallace was five years old. He attended Hertford Grammar School until 1837, when he reached the age of 14, the normal leaving age for a pupil not going on to university. Wallace then moved to London to board with his older brother John, a 19-year-old apprentice builder. This was a stopgap measure until William, his oldest brother, was ready to take him on as an apprentice surveyor. While in London, Alfred attended lectures and read books at the London Mechanics Institute. Here he was exposed to the radical political ideas of the Welsh social reformer Robert Owen and of the English-born political theorist Thomas Paine. He left London in 1837 to live with William and work as his apprentice for six years. They moved repeatedly to different places in Mid-Wales. Then at the end of 1839, they moved to Kington, Herefordshire, near the Welsh border, before eventually settling at Neath in Wales. Between 1840 and 1843, Wallace worked as a land surveyor in the countryside of the west of England and Wales. The natural history of his surroundings aroused his interest; from 1841 he collected flowers and plants as an amateur botanist. One result of Wallace's early travels is a modern controversy about his nationality. Since he was born in Monmouthshire, some sources have considered him to be Welsh. Other historians have questioned this because neither of his parents were Welsh, his family only briefly lived in Monmouthshire, the Welsh people Wallace knew in his childhood considered him to be English, and because he consistently referred to himself as English rather than Welsh. One Wallace scholar has stated that the most reasonable interpretation is therefore that he was an Englishman born in Wales. In 1843 Wallace's father died, and a decline in demand for surveying meant William's business no longer had work available. For a short time Wallace was unemployed, then early in 1844 he was engaged by the Collegiate School in Leicester to teach drawing, mapmaking, and surveying. He had already read George Combe's The Constitution of Man, and after Spencer Hall lectured on mesmerism, Wallace as well as some of the older pupils tried it out. Wallace spent many hours at the town library in Leicester; he read An Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Robert Malthus, Alexander von Humboldt's Personal Narrative, Darwin's Journal (The Voyage of the Beagle), and Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology. One evening Wallace met the entomologist Henry Bates, who was 19 years old, and had published an 1843 paper on beetles in the journal Zoologist. He befriended Wallace and started him collecting insects. When Wallace's brother William died in March 1845, Wallace left his teaching position to assume control of his brother's firm in Neath, but his brother John and he were unable to make the business work. After a few months, he 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. Wallace's work on the survey was largely outdoors in the countryside, allowing him to indulge his new passion for collecting insects. Wallace persuaded his brother John to join him in starting another architecture and civil engineering firm. It carried out projects including the design of a building for the Neath Mechanics' Institute, founded in 1843. During this period, he exchanged letters with Bates about books. By the end of 1845, Wallace was convinced by Robert Chambers's anonymously published treatise on progressive development, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, but he found Bates was more critical. Wallace re-read Darwin's Journal, and on 11 April 1846 wrote "As the Journal of a scientific traveller, it is second only to Humboldt's 'Personal Narrative'—as a work of general interest, perhaps superior to it." William Jevons, the founder of the Neath institute, was impressed by Wallace and persuaded him to give lectures there on scienc.... Discover the Alfred Russel Wallace popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Alfred Russel Wallace books.