Alfred Russel Wallace: biography of this Welsh naturalist.

Summary gives the life and legacy of this famous naturalist, whose works resemble those of Darwin.

Alfred Russel Wallace's life is not as well known as that of another great naturalist of his time, Charles Darwin, but certainly his life and work were very important in the last decades of the great English naturalist's life.

Younger than Darwin, Wallace reached conclusions that he had been trying to clarify for decades. Wallace's life is characterized by much similarity to that of his English counterpart, and also by some controversy. Let's take a look at his story in this biography of Alfred Russel Wallace..

Biography of Alfred Russel Wallace

In the following we will see Wallace's whole life in a summarized way, talking especially about his trips to Malaysia, his similarities and differences with Darwin and the well-known and controversial incident of the letters he sent to the latter.

Early years

Alfred Russel Wallace was born in Monmouthshire, Wales, on January 8, 1823, in a modest Anglican family.. At the age of 13 he decided to finish his studies to go to work as his brother's apprentice carpenter and, in 1837, he went to help another brother in surveying tasks.

Although in his adolescence he opted to dedicate himself to more mundane work, in 1844 he changed his mind when he received a book called Vestiges of the natural history of creationwhich combined scientific studies with theology. The book, written by Robert Chambers, argued that species progressed in the evolutionary scale according to the divine will.a belief very much in keeping with the Victorian times that were passing.

That is why, after reading this book, Wallace decided that his profession would be that of a naturalist. However, as much as he wanted to start this professional career, he was faced with the problem of where he would get the money and the training that would allow him to travel to exotic lands and face possible threats in those far away places. He managed to find a way to earn a modest income by selling rare specimens he collected.

Trip to Brazil and Malaysia

Inspired by reading The Voyage of the BeagleAlfred Wallace traveled to Brazil between 1848 and 1852, with Henry Walter Bates, another naturalist.. There they traveled the Amazon and Negro rivers and reached regions that no European had visited before.

Although he was fulfilling his dream, the beginning of his professional career started badly enough, since it was in the South American country where he contracted malaria and suffered for years from fevers that forced him to stay in bed. But he fought against the disease, and it did not prevent him from starting to propose some biogeographical principles, based on the distribution of insect species. Unfortunately, when he tried to return to Europe, the ship in which he was traveling caught fire and sank, losing the manuscripts of two books he was preparing.

In 1854 he would travel to Malaya and, during the following 12 years, he would write more than 50 scientific articles on the natural history of the archipelago.. While there, he managed to offer a clearer Darwinian definition of the idea of species, in relation to reproductive isolation and differences with subspecies and local races.

Since his beginnings in the field of naturalism, Wallace was characterized by being an admirer of Darwin, but at the same time being, to a certain extent, critical of him. He accepted the reproductive barrier proposed by the English naturalist as a cause of speciation, i.e., if two groups of individuals cannot reproduce among themselves, it is most likely that they are two different species.

However, despite accepting this principle, Wallace did not accept this idea as a definition of species. More factors should be taken into account to define the limits of a species, whether animal or plant. He did consider that natural selection could lead to the formation of two new species from the same ancestral group of individuals, which today is known as the "Wallace effect".

It is also while in Malaysia that Wallace reached conclusions very similar to those made by Charles Darwin while in the Galapagos Islands.The idea that similar species, as was the case of the finches, underwent modifications depending on the demands of the environment and the ability of the species to adapt to it.

What is noteworthy about this thought is that Wallace, and it is something that has been quite ignored by the scientific community, came to raise these ideas before Darwin, who was warned by his friend Charles Lyell when he learned that a young naturalist was formulating such convincing theories.

In 1856 Wallace traveled to Bali, touring the channels between this island and neighboring Lombok, separated by only 20 kilometers. He was struck by the fact that, despite being so close, they harbored such different species.. He saw that in Bali there were animals typical of continental Asia, in Lombok there were marsupials, like those that can be found in Australia. It is at this time that Alfred Wallace drew the line that would receive his surname, which serves to delimit the Indo-Malayan fauna of the west from the Austro-Malay fauna of the east.

This line has been interpreted by other scientists as evidence of continental drift, since it would allow us to understand why there were two such different faunas in the same archipelago, as well as supporting the idea of a primordial continent, Wallacea.

Based on these data and those obtained in other parts of the world, Wallace wrote his book "Geographic distribution of animals", where he proposed to divide the earth into six biogeographic zones. Later, he would travel to the islands of Ternate and Gilolo, where he read Principles of Geologywritten by Charles Lyell. It is the same book that Darwin read while aboard the Beagle.

While on the islands, and suffering from a terrible episode of fevers, he wrote "On the tendency of varieties to depart indefinitely from the original type" (1858), where he argued that there were two factors controlling evolution: the divergence between groups of individuals (Sarawak's law), and the survival of the most adapted, the "winners".

Knowing that his work could benefit the evolutionary thesis, he decided to send the manuscript to Darwin, he decided to send the manuscript to Darwin for his opinion and asked him to show it to Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker.. After reading the manuscript, Darwin had a bittersweet feeling. It was interesting to see how some of his own research questions were answered, even though he had been a naturalist and traveler for much longer than Wallace.

Thinking about natural selection

While on Ternate, an island in Indonesia, the idea of natural selection began to crystallize in his mind. While on the island, and suffering from fevers that left him practically paralyzed with Pain and anguish, he began to see in the thought of Malthus and the ideas of Lyell the principles that could explain natural selection.e began to see in the thought of Malthus and the ideas of Lyell the principles that could explain the adaptation of organisms to their habitat.. It is here that he begins to explain the process of divergence that lies behind the great diversity of living things.

Advantageous changes in certain individuals help them to survive and reproduce, making their genes more likely to be passed on to the next generation. After several generations, these genes become common throughout the group or species.

Wallace was critical of the expression "natural selection", especially when it was used as a synonym for the survival of the fittest.. For Wallace, specimens with less advantageous characteristics did not necessarily have to be left behind in the race for survival, they simply would not have as many privileges as the more adapted ones.

The incident of the letters between Wallace and Darwin

When talking about the figures of Wallace and Darwin it is inevitable to talk about how the famous English naturalist took advantage of the discoveries of his Welsh counterpart, although the way in which he did it and how the events happened in general has caused debate.

In March 1858 Wallace sent his paper On the Tendency of Varieties... to Darwin for his opinion. The problem is that it is not known exactly when the letter arrived.

It is believed that the text arrived on June 18, something affirmed by Darwin himself, and that it would be the proof that his principle of divergence, that is, the explanation of how species differ from each other despite coming from the same common ancestor, would have been formulated completely independently of Wallace's ideas..

However, his detractors consider that Darwin was in possession of the letter before, between June 2 and 3, which would have allowed him to read it for two weeks and study it thoroughly to draw his own conclusions, reworking his theories. This idea is based on the fact that a letter sent by Wallace to Henry Bates' brother, which would have been dispatched on the same day as the one addressed to Darwin, arrived in London on June 2.

Darwin was very meticulous about the letters he received, filing them in case he had to keep an eye on them in the future. However, and as something that raises even more suspicions, the first letter he received from Wallace was not archived and has not been found. The rest of the letters sent by the Welshman to Darwin were found.

Darwin, who was 49 years old at the time, had spent the last two decades trying to find an explanation for the divergence of species and suddenly received a letter from someone much younger who had reached a quite plausible conclusion on his own. Was the English naturalist envious? What is known is that he was quite dismayed by the letter, and even considered abandoning his own work..

Despite the blow, his friends Charles Lyell and Joseph Dalton Hooker intervened to encourage Darwin and protect his extensive scientific work. The problem was that, unlike Wallace, at the time he had nothing presentable to show for it.. The only thing that came to their minds was to restate Wallace's thought and adapt it in a more Darwinian language.

Much has been said that, after this incident, in order to solve it amicably, Darwin and Wallace agreed to work together on the origin of species, and how these were differentiated as generations passed. However, there is a broad consensus that both scientists never read nor published a co-authored paper. What happened is that Lyell and Hooker highlighted the contributions of both, albeit without Wallace's permission, at a conference at the LinneWallace's permission, in a lecture at the Linnean Society on July 1, 1858.

Despite this incident, in 1860 Alfred Russel Wallace received a copy of Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species" and expressed his great admiration for the English naturalist. In fact, he was proud to have helped Darwin's evolutionary thesis with his idea of divergence between species.

Although he agreed with certain aspects of Darwin, it is worth mentioning that Wallace was strongly opposed to the idea that the human mind had evolved through natural selection.. Like other Victorian thinkers, Wallace believed that properly human capacities such as mathematical thinking, morality and spirituality were something revealed by divine will, not as a result of the evolutionary process.

Another aspect in which he differed from Darwin was that some traits present in certain human races, such as the loss of body hair, the structure of the hand or the size of the brain had not contributed significantly to the survival of those races. In addition, did not share Darwin's idea that there were intellectually superior races compared to so-called "savage" races..

In 1889 Wallace published Darwinism: an exposition of the theory of natural selection - with some of its applicationsIn 1889 Wallace published Darwinism: an exposition of the theory of natural selection - with some of its applications, a text in which he coined the term Darwinism and which, possibly, was the one that caused Alfred Russel Wallace to be overshadowed by the great work of Charles Darwin in the field of evolution. Far from having distanced himself from him because of the correspondence incident, Wallace helped Darwin's figure not to perish with the passage of time.

Return to Great Britain and final years

In 1862 Wallace returned to England as a well-known naturalist, although not as well known as Darwin was becoming. Being a second-class naturalist, no matter how famous one is, does not benefit, and Wallace's life on his return to the British Isles proves it. Without economic security, he continued to depend on the sale of exotic specimens and lived on the taxes received from his writings.. Despite the controversy, Charles Darwin and some of his friends ensured that Alfred Russel Wallace received a civil service pension from 1881.

Wallace had a rather more spiritual view of evolution than Darwin. Not only did he believe that the mental faculties could not be the result of evolution, wishing to unite science with religious views, but he also had beliefs somewhat removed from what would be considered properly scientific..

He was an advocate of phrenology, i.e., that the shape of the skull implies differences in certain cognitive abilities and behavioral aptitudes. In addition, he was opposed to vaccination, considering that its application, rather than a measure to improve the health of the population, was a control measure.

Alfred Russel Wallace died in Dorset, England, on November 7, 1913, at the age of 90.. Despite being in Darwin's shadow, his death was widely reported in the press at the time, and in fact, several scientists ensured that a medallion in his honor was placed near Darwin's grave two years later.

Bibliographical references:

• Gallardo, Milton H. (2013). Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913): Obra y figura. Revista chilena de historia natural, 86(3), 241-250. https://dx.doi.org/10.4067/S0716-078X2013000300002
• Wallace, A. R. (1889). Darwinism: An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection, with Some of Its Applications. London: Macmillan and Company. p. 494.