Wallace, Alfred Russell

Category: Genius

This description is from Wikipedia

Alfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist. He is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection, which prompted Charles Darwin to publish his own ideas in On the Origin of Species.   Wallace did extensive fieldwork, first in the Amazon River basin and then in the Malay Archipelago, where he identified the Wallace Line that divides 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". Wallace was one of the leading evolutionary thinkers of the 19th century and made many other contributions to the development of evolutionary theory besides being co-discoverer of natural selection. These included the concept of warning colouration in animals, and the Wallace effect, a hypothesis on how natural selection could contribute to speciation by encouraging the development of barriers against hybridization.

Wallace was strongly attracted to unconventional ideas. His advocacy of spiritualism and his belief in a non-material origin for the higher mental faculties of humans strained his relationship with some members of the scientific establishment. In addition to his scientific work, he was a social activist who was critical of what he considered to be an unjust social and economic system in 19th-century Britain. His interest in natural history resulted in his being one of the first prominent scientists to raise concerns over the environmental impact of human activity.

Wallace was a prolific author who wrote on both scientific and social issues; his account of his adventures and observations during his explorations in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, The Malay Archipelago, is regarded as probably the best of all journals of scientific exploration published during the 19th century.

Wallace had financial difficulties throughout much of his life. His Amazon and far-eastern trips were supported by the sale of specimens he collected and, after he lost most of the considerable money he made from those sales in unsuccessful investments, he had to support himself mostly from the publications he produced.

Unlike some of his contemporaries in the British scientific community, such as Darwin and Charles Lyell, he had no family wealth to fall back on and he was unsuccessful in finding a long-term salaried position, receiving no regular income until a small government pension was obtained for him by Darwin in 1881.

Observations

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• Wallace, Alfred Russel - Personal spiritual experiences [Mesmerism]
• Wallace, Alfred Russel - Personal spiritual experiences [table rapping]
• Wallace, Alfred Russel - Study of Apparitions – Six cases where dogs and horses could perceive with humans the manifestations of haunting
• Wallace, Alfred Russel – Confirms an observation made by his friend, Mr. Serjeant Cox, ‘an eminent philosopher’
• Wallace, Alfred Russell - Conceives the idea of natural selection
• Wallace, Alfred Russell - The existence of spirit
• Wallace, Alfred Russell - The use of observations as evidence
• Wallace, Alfred Russell - Truth is born into this world only with pangs and tribulations