![]() He shot and skinned several for the British Museum, and even raised an orphan orang-utan in his field camp. During the course of the expedition, Wallace obtained the distinction of being the first European to study apes in the wild. The work was particularly note-worthy for its descriptions of birds of paradise, orang-utans, and native peoples. Wallace dedicated the work, which has never been out of print, to Charles Darwin, “not only as a token of personal esteem and friendship but also to express…deep admiration for his genius and his works.” The work, which provided readers (scientists and laymen alike) a rare window into the exotic depths of the “wild East,” became one of the most popular books on scientific exploration in the 1800s. ![]() Six years after returning from the expedition, Wallace began writing an account of his adventure, which was published in 1869 in the two-volume masterpiece, The Malay Archipelago. Over the course of the Malay Expedition, Wallace gathered 125,660 specimens, more than a thousand of which were new to science. The Malay Archipelago and the Fever that Changed Science Wallace departed from England in 1854 to embark on his eight year journey through the exotic East Indies. Undaunted, Wallace used the insurance money he collected from his specimens to organize a new expedition to the Malay Archipelago (today Malaysia and Indonesia). The ship caught fire and sank, along with most of Wallace’s collections and notebooks. The untimely death of his younger brother, however, who had traveled to South America to join the expedition, prompted Wallace, together with his entire collection of specimens and notebooks, to return to England. Over the four years of this exploration, Wallace gathered thousands of specimens, largely insects. The duo hoped to determine the mechanism driving the transmutation of species, the precursor to the theory of Natural Selection. The two were invigorated by Darwin’s account of his voyage on the Beagle, and in 1848 set out on an expedition of their own to South America. While in his twenties, Wallace took a job as a schoolteacher in Leicester, during which time he met and befriended Henry Bates, a promising young entomologist. Illustration from A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, Wallace’s account of his expedition to South America.Īlfred Russel Wallace was born in 1823 in Usk, England, the seventh of nine children. This week, we explore the significant contribution Wallace made to natural history, with particular attention to Wallace’s account of his Malay expedition – the adventure that triggered a fever that fanned the flames of genius. The Natural History Museum, London, has organized Wallace100, with a year’s worth of events and writings on the life and legacy of this great man. Wallace expanded on this idea in a detailed article which he subsequently sent to Charles Darwin for review, unaware that Darwin himself had come to the same conclusion, though had yet to publish his theory.Īt the suggestion of Darwin’s friends Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker, Wallace’s article, together with unpublished writing by Darwin on the subject of natural selection and evolution, were presented to the Linnean Society in 1858 and subsequently published in the Society’s journal as “On the Tendency of Species to Form Varieties and On the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection.”Ģ013 marks the 100th anniversary of Wallace’s death (in November, 1913). ![]() While Wallace, an avid explorer, collector, and natural historian, had long been seeking the cause of speciation during his 14 years of exploration in South America, Malaysia and Indonesia, it was in the midst of a fever in 1858, during his expedition to the Malay Archipelago, that inspiration struck: in the form of the theory of natural selection. ![]() While it is true that this 1858 publication represented 20 years of Darwin’s contemplation and conclusions on the process of natural selection (which culminated in the monumental work On the Origin of Speciespublished just one year later in 1859), the Linnean Society piece was actually co-authored by Alfred Russel Wallace, who independently conceived of the theory of natural selection. If we were to ask you who penned this publication, chances are your response would be Charles Darwin. In 1858, Journal and Proceedings of the Linnean Society: Zoology published a paper proposing what would later be recognized as a revolutionary scientific concept: the theory of Evolution by means of Natural Selection. Book of the Week: The Malay Archipelago, by Alfred Russel Wallace
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