Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) was one of the most important natural scientists in Victorian England and, along with Charles Darwin, the founder of the theory of evolution . The so-called "Darwin-Wallace papers" on the theory of evolution are considered the most important document in the history of biology. In 1858 they were read out for the first time in the Linne Society.
Even before his research trips to the Amazon region on the Rio Negro (1848-52) and to the Malay Archipelago (1854-62), the self-taught Wallace was a convinced evolutionist. From the very beginning, he pursued a research program to explain that "riddle of riddles" - the origin of species - with which biologists are still preoccupied today. Wallace, like Darwin and independent of him, had the crucial insight that evolutionary changes come about through a process of selection.
Wallace was a great collector of natural history and also one of the founders of animal geography. Not only are many animal species named after him, including birds and flying frogs; an entire geographic region of the earth (the Wallacea) and a prominent faunal boundary (the Wallace Line) that cuts through the middle of the Malay Archipelago also rightly bear his name. To this day, he is considered one of the great naturalists, along with Charles Darwin and Alexander von Humboldt.
More information:
Book Tip:
- "Alfred Russel Wallace - Adventures on the Amazon and on Rio Negro"
by Matthias Glaubrecht (Publisher Galiani)