He was considered the 19th century's leading expert on the geographical distribution of animal species, and is sometimes called the "father of biogeography", or more specifically of zoogeography. He then did fieldwork in the Malay Archipelago, where he identified the faunal divide now termed the Wallace Line, which separates 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. Wallace did extensive fieldwork, starting in the Amazon River basin. It spurred Darwin to set aside the "big species book" he was drafting and quickly write an abstract of it, which was published in 1859 as On the Origin of Species. He independently conceived the theory of evolution through natural selection his 1858 paper on the subject was published that year alongside extracts from Charles Darwin's earlier writings on the topic. Gold Medal of the Société de Géographie (1870)Īlfred Russel Wallace OM FRS (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was an English naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and illustrator.Olcott, who had sent Wallace a copy of his book People from the Other Worlds (1875). He had earlier been in correspondence with H. Wallace” (printed in the Adyar Theosophist 7: 27 : 559). I beg you to accept my carte de visite, which I regret is not a better one, and remain, / Dear Madam, / Yours with sincere respect, / Alfred R. Your book will open up to many spiritualists a whole world of new ideas, and cannot fail to be of the greatest value in the enquiry which is now being so earnestly carried on. Moreover, your command of all the refinements of our language is such that you need not fear criticism on that score. I am amazed at the vast amount of erudition displayed in them and the great interest of the topics on which they treat. I have as yet only had time to read a chapter here and there. BLAVATSKY sent ISIS UNVEILED to Wallace at its publication, he replied on January 1, 1878, as follows: “Dear Madam, / I return you many thanks for the handsome present of your two very handsome volumes. He had joined the Theosophical Society in 1876, shortly after its foundation. He was interested in Spiritualism and other psychic phenomena and in 1875 published On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism (revised and expanded third edition in 1896), in which he gave experimental reasons for his beliefs. Wallace was active in social matters, supporting the rights of workers and admiring Edward Bellamy's utopian novel Looking Backward, which appealed to many Theosophists also. His most important work, Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, was published in 1870, and in it he differed from Darwin, contending that mankind had not, like other animals, been produced by the unaided operation of natural selection, but that other, some nonphysical, causes had operated. Wallace was born in Llanbadoc, Monmouthshire, Wales, on January 8, 1823, and died at Broadstone in Dorset, England, on November 7, 1913.Īmong his many distinctions Wallace was awarded the Royal Society’s Royal Medal in 1868 and the Copley Metal and the Order of Merit both in 1908 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1893. Alfred Wallace (1823-1913) was an English naturalist, geographer, anthropologist, and biologist famous for having formulated, simultaneously with Charles Darwin, a theory about the origin of species by natural selection.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |