Rocky Road: Alfred Russel Wallace

Alfred Russel Wallace

From Alfred Russel Wallace: A Life by Peter Raby

If ever a scientist didn't get his fair share of lasting glory, it was Alfred Russel Wallace. Wallace co-founded the theory of natural selection with the country gentleman Charles Darwin, but though Wallace enjoyed recognition during his own lifetime, his contributions were largely overlooked for much of the 20th century. And while he lived, he led a much less luxurious life than Darwin did.

Before starting a family, Wallace's father Thomas spent his days as an idle gentleman. He gave up that idleness quite reluctantly, wandering from one bad investment or low paying job to another. This financial uncertainty may have been what fostered in the future naturalist an unusual sensitivity to people others considered inferior, both the poor and so-called savages of other cultures. An example of this was his ability to see himself through their eyes, once recounting, "One day when I was rambling in the forest, an old man stopped to look at me catching an insect. He stood very quietly till I had pinned and put it away in my collecting box, when he could contain himself no longer, but bent almost double, and enjoyed a hearty roar of laughter."

Wallace had to leave school and start working at the age of 14, but he used his meager spare time to continue his unofficial education. While visiting his older brother in London, he took a welcome break from the weekly sermons on fire and brimstone he always heard in the parish back home. He attended scientific lectures, read Tom Paine's Age of Reason, and read Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation endorsing transmutation. Vestiges had a long-lasting effect on him, and he set the goal of uncovering how organisms change over time.

As a young man, Wallace worked as a surveyor for his older brother. In that occupation, he started a practice that would recur later in his life: initiating correspondence with prominent scientists to discuss their field of research. (A 2006 discovery revealed an unpublished letter of his to William Henry Fox Talbot about ways of improving telescope mirrors.) Wallace worked as a surveyor for several years before setting out for the Amazon to work as a commercial collector. There, he searched the New World's rainforests looking for exotic specimens for European buyers. Early on, he began to see himself (accurately) as more than a collector — as a scientific traveler. Unfortunately, the voyage from South America back to England was disastrous: a fire forced everyone to abandon ship, and Wallace lost virtually everything he had collected. He mourned his losses, then started planning his next expedition. Not long afterwards, he was in the Malay Archipelago.

Among Wallace's discoveries in the South Pacific was a breakthrough in biogeography: the Wallace Line, the recognition of distinctly different organisms living in close proximity to each other in similar environments. What he could not know at the time — the theory of plate tectonics was a long way off — was that this line marks the ancient boundary between Laurasia and Gondwana, supercontinents of the Mesozoic.

Wallace made a similar breakthrough in understanding evolution. Weak with malaria, he one day had a flash of insight on how species change. The result was his scientific paper On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type. Although he didn't use the term "natural selection," he argued the same thing.

An antelope with shorter or weaker legs must necessarily suffer more from the attacks of the feline carnivora; the passenger pigeon with less powerful wings would sooner or later be affected in its powers of procuring a regular supply of food . . . If, on the other hand, any species should produce a variety having slightly increased powers of preserving existence, that variety must inevitably in time acquire a superiority in numbers. . . . Now, let some alternation of physical conditions occur in the district — a long period of drought, a destruction of vegetation by locusts, the irruption of some new carnivorous animal seeking "pastures new" . . . it is evident that, of all the individuals composing the species, those forming the least numerous and most feebly organized variety would suffer first, and, were the pressure severe, must soon become extinct.

Rather than send his paper directly to a publisher, Wallace instead sent the manuscript to Charles Darwin, with whom he had initiated a correspondence. Upon seeing Wallace's succinct, eloquent paper, Darwin realized he was about to be scooped, and decided to end the 20-year delay in publishing his own theory. Wallace's paper and Darwin's various notes and correspondence on the subject were read at the same Linnaean Society meeting, in London on July 1, 1858. The next year, Darwin published On the Origin of Species. Although Wallace independently reached the same conclusion, it has usually been Darwin's name alone associated with the theory. Wallace expressed no resentment at receiving less credit. He remained a gracious man to the last, commenting late in life that his greatest achievement had been to prompt Darwin to publish his own theory. Darwin, in turn, proved to be a good friend to Wallace, recalling "how generous and noble was his disposition" in his autobiography, and campaigning vigorously to secure Wallace a government pension he desperately needed. Wallace, it turned out, had no more skill in managing money than his father.

Wallace held other interests besides biology, some of them controversial: land nationalization, a vehement opposition to vaccinations and a belief in spiritualism. In fact, other scientists tried to investigate spiritualism, but he lacked their skepticism. His belief may have been influenced by the untimely death of his eldest child; like many others, Wallace hoped to communicate with his lost loved one through a medium. His belief in spiritualism caused him to differ with Darwin on the origin of the human mind. Darwin saw humans as highly evolved organisms; Wallace believed that the human mind was inspired by something outside evolution, and that the human spirit could continue to progress after death.

Wallace's beliefs about man's role in the universe changed with time. In later years, he claimed that the whole purpose of the universe was the development of mankind, just "a little lower than the angels." As a young man, though, he thought differently. In one passage about the King Bird of Paradise, Wallace both marveled at the existence of such amazing creatures that had so seldom been seen by people, and made a prescient observation about humanity's impact on nature:

I thought of the long ages of the past, during which the successive generations of this little creature had run their course — year by year being born, and living and dying amid these dark and gloomy woods, with no intelligent eye to gaze upon their loveliness; to all appearance such a wanton waste of beauty. Such ideas excite a feeling of melancholy. It seems sad, that on the one hand such exquisite creatures should live out their lives and exhibit their charms only in these wild inhospitable regions, doomed for ages yet to come to hopeless barbarism; while on the other hand, should civilized man ever reach these distant lands, and bring moral, intellectual, and physical light into the recesses of these virgin forests, we may be sure that he will so disturb the nicely-balanced relations of organic and inorganic nature as to cause the disappearance, and finally the extinction, of these very beings whose wonderful structure and beauty he alone is fitted to appreciate and enjoy. This consideration must surely tell us that all living things were not made for man.

Wallace's accomplishments were remarkable. He assembled vast plant and animal collections, many of his discoveries completely new to science. He wrote more than 20 books, and roughly 700 articles and published letters. He keenly understood the role of competition in nature, but maintained throughout his life that cooperation and universal education were the surest paths to human achievement.

For more information:
Alfred Russel Wallace: A Life by Peter Raby
The Alfred Russel Wallace Reader edited by Jane R. Camerini
Song of the Dodo by David Quammen
Voyages of Discovery by Tony Rice
A Bedside Nature edited by Walter Gratzer
Charles Darwin: Voyaging and Charles Darwin: The Power of Place by Janet Browne
Evolution by Edward J. Larson
Autobiography of Charles Darwin by Francis Darwin
Victorian Sensation by James A. Secord
"Reflections on Wallace" by Charles H. Smith in Nature Magazine, September 7, 2006 issue
The Great Naturalists edited by Robert Huxley
A Life of Sir Francis Galton by Nicholas Wright Gillham
The Meaning of Fossils by Martin J.S. Rudwick
The Monk in the Garden by Robin Marantz Henig
The Secret Life of Trees by Colin Tudge
Evolution by Linda Gamlin
Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea by Carl Zimmer
Galileo's Commandment edited by Edmund Blair Bolles