The prominent absence of Alfred Russel Wallace at the Darwin anniversaries in Germany in 1909, 1959 and 2009

It is well known that the contribution of Alfred Russell Wallace (1823–1913) to the development of the “Darwinian” principle of natural selection has often been neglected. Here we focus on how the three anniversaries to celebrate the origin of the Darwin–Wallace theory in Germany in 1909, in 1959 in the divided country, as well as in 2009, have represented Charles Robert Darwin’s and Alfred Russell Wallace’s contributions. We have analyzed books and proceedings volumes related to these anniversaries, and the main result is that Wallace was almost always ignored, or only mentioned in passing. In 1909, Ernst Haeckel gave a talk in Jena, later published under the title The worldview of Darwin and Lamarck (Das Weltbild von Darwin und Lamarck), but not as the Darwin–Wallace concept. Haeckel mentions Wallace only once. In two important proceedings volumes from the 1959 anniversaries, Wallace was ignored. The only fair treatment of Wallace is given in another book, a collection of documents edited by Gerhard Heberer, for which the author selected nine key documents and reprinted excerpts (1959). Three of them were articles by Wallace, including the Sarawak- and Ternate-papers of 1855 and 1858, respectively. An analysis of the dominant themes during the celebrations of 2009 shows that none of the six topics had much to do with Wallace and his work. Thus, the tendency to exclude Alfred Russell Wallace is an international phenomenon, and largely attributable to the “Darwin industry”.     

Engaging with Lyell: Alfred Russel Wallace’s Sarawak Law and Ternate papers as reactions to Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) and Charles Darwin (1809–1882) are honored as the founders of modern evolutionary biology. Accordingly, much attention has focused on their relationship, from their independent development of the principle of natural selection to the receipt by Darwin of Wallace’s essay from Ternate in the spring of 1858, and the subsequent reading of the Wallace and Darwin papers at the Linnean Society on 1 July 1858. In the events of 1858 Wallace and Darwin are typically seen as central players, with Darwin’s friends Charles Lyell (1797–1875) and Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911) playing supporting roles. This narrative has resulted in an under-appreciation of a more central role for Charles Lyell as both Wallace’s inspiration and foil. The extensive anti-transmutation arguments in Lyell’s landmark Principles of Geology were taken as the definitive statement on the subject. Wallace, in his quest to solve the mystery of species origins, engaged with Lyell’s arguments in his private field notebooks in a way that is concordant with his engagement with Lyell in the 1855 and 1858 papers. I show that Lyell was the object of Wallace’s Sarawak Law and Ternate papers through a consideration of the circumstances that led Wallace to send his Ternate paper to Darwin, together with an analysis of the material that Wallace drew upon from the Principles. In this view Darwin was, ironically, intended for a supporting role in mediating Wallace’s attempted dialog with Lyell.     

At home among strangers: Alfred Russel Wallace in Russia

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) was an influential figure within Russian pre-Synthetic evolutionary biology, i.e. the time period before the Synthetic Theory of Evolution was established (ca. 1880–1930s). His major works were translated into Russian and his general ideas were read and discussed by both insiders and outsiders of scientific evolutionism. At the same time, Wallace played a controversial role in the growth of Darwinism in Russia, and Charles Robert Darwin (1809–1882) has eclipsed Wallace in his influence on Russian evolutionary thinking. In this paper we briefly outline Wallace’s impact on Russian pre-Synthetic scientific evolutionism and its general intellectual climate. We demonstrate that both Russian pro-Darwinian evolutionists and anti-Darwinians (scientific anti-Darwinians as well as creationists) were fully aware of Wallace’s contributions to the development of evolutionary theory. Yet, Wallace’s radical selectionism, as well as his controversial arguments for “design in nature”, predetermined his special place within the Russian intellectual landscape.     

Alfred Russel Wallace

Alfred Russel Wallace The British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913), well known as co‐discoverer of the “Darwinian” principle of natural selection, came from an ordinary background. Wallace left school aged 14 and never attended University. He became a land surveyor and studied, in his spare time, the works of the most famous naturalists of his age. After extensive expeditions (Amazon, 1848–1852; Southeast Asia, 1854–1862), Wallace spent the rest of his life in England as a free‐lance science writer. His contributions to systematics (he discovered/described many new species), evolutionary biology, zoogeography, anthropology and other branches of the live sciences are summarized in his 22 books and ca. 700 papers. Since Wallace became an adherent of spiritualism and mixed up supernatural phenomena with scientific facts in some of his later books, he remains a controversial figure in the history of the life sciences.     

Charles Robert Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace: their dispute over the units of selection

Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace independently discovered the mechanism of natural selection for evolutionary change. However, they viewed the working of selection differently. For Darwin, selection was always focused on the benefit for the individual. For Wallace, selection was as much something of benefit for the group as for the individual. This difference is traced to their different background political–economic views, with Darwin in favor of Adam Smith's view of society and Wallace following Robert Owen in being a socialist.     

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913): the forgotten co-founder of the Neo-Darwinian theory of biological evolution

The British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913), who had to leave school aged 14 and never attended university, did extensive fieldwork, first in the Amazon River basin (1848–1852) and then in Southeast Asia (1854–1862). Based on this experience, and after reading the corresponding scientific literature, Wallace postulated that species were not created, but are modified descendants of pre-existing varieties (Sarawak Law paper, 1855). Evolution is brought about by a struggle for existence via natural selection, which results in the adaptation of those individuals in variable populations who survive and reproduce (Ternate essay, 1858). In his monograph Darwinism (1889), and in subsequent publications, Wallace extended the contents of Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) into the Neo-Darwinian theory of biological evolution, with reference to the work of August Weismann (1834–1914). Wallace also became the (co)-founder of biogeography, biodiversity research, astrobiology and evolutionary anthropology. Moreover, he envisioned what was later called the anthropocene (i.e., the age of human environmental destructiveness). However, since Wallace believed in atheistic spiritualism and mixed up scientific facts and supernatural speculations in some of his writings, he remains a controversial figure in the history of biology.     

The story of a largely unknown evolution – Germ theory hoax

The Piltdown Man debacle provides us with the most infamous forgery in science. However, another equally intriguing story exists concerning a document by a Bostonian called George Sleeper, which purported to be a pre-Darwin–Wallace anticipation of evolution and an equally convincing account of the germ theory published before Louis Pasteur’s famous studies on this subject. The story involves two giants in the world of evolutionary theory, Alfred Russel Wallace and E.B. Poulton. While Wallace was convinced that the Sleeper document was genuine, Poulton’s detailed investigations showed that it was a fake and a hoax. Despite this conclusion, doubts still exist about the authenticity of the Sleeper document.     

Revision of the coral genus Acropora (Scleractinia: Astrocoeniina: Acroporidae) in Indonesia

The coral genus Acropora is reviewed from Indonesia for the first time, following detailed collections made at 131 sites and additional material collected from approximately 40 sites throughout the archipelago during the period 1993–6. Eighty-three species are recorded, four of these ( Acropora halmaherae, A. awi, A. plumosa and A. simplex ) new to science, six first described in 1994 and six in 1997. Records are compared with specimen-based records from localities worldwide. The species of Acrokora occurring in Indonesian waters include five recorded only from the Indian Ocean and Indonesia, seven recorded only from the Pacific Ocean, South China Sea and Indonesia, and a further 10 species apparently endemic to Indonesia, as well as widespread Indo-Pacific species. Two species ( A. jacquelineae Wallace, 1994 and A. batunai Wallace, 1996) are recorded only from north central Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, and two species ( A. russelli Wallace, 1994 and A. turaki Wallace, 1994) only from north central Indonesia and north western Australia. The findings contribute to a new view of the corals of the Indo-Pacific 'centre of diversity' as a composite fauna with origins in a number of events in space and time.     

Deconstructing Darwin: Evolutionary theory in context

The topic of this paper is external versus internal explanations, first, of the genesis of evolutionary theory and, second, its reception. Victorian England was highly competitive and individualistic. So was the view of society promulgated by Malthus and the theory of evolution set out by Charles Darwin and A.R. Wallace. The fact that Darwin and Wallace independently produced a theory of evolution that was just as competitive and individualistic as the society in which they lived is taken as evidence for the impact that society has on science. The same conclusion is reached with respect to the reception of evolutionary theory. Because Darwins contemporaries lived in such a competitive and individualistic society, they were prone to accept a theory that exhibited these same characteristics. The trouble is that Darwin and Wallace did not live in anything like the same society and did not formulate the same theory. Although the character of Victorian society may have influenced the acceptance of evolutionary theory, it was not the competitive, individualistic theory that Darwin and Wallace set out but a warmer, more comforting theory.     

Wallace’s Other Line: Human Biogeography and Field Practice in the Eastern Colonial Tropics

This paper examines how the 19th-century British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace used biogeographical mapping practices to draw a boundary line between Malay and Papuan groups in the colonial East Indies in the 1850s. Instead of looking for a continuous gradient of variation between Malays and Papuans, Wallace chose to look for a sharp discontinuity between them. While Wallace’s “human biogeography” paralleled his similar project to map plant and animal distributions in the same region, he invoked distinctive “mental and moral” features as more decisive than physical ones. By following Wallace in the field, we can see his field mapping practices in action – how he conquered the problem of local particularity in the case of human variation. His experiences on the periphery of expanding European empires, far from metropolitan centers, shaped Wallace’s observations in the field. Taking his cues from colonial racial categories and his experiences collaborating with local people in the field, Wallace constructed the boundary line between the Malay and Papuan races during several years of work in the field criss-crossing the archipelago as a scientific collector. This effort to map a boundary line in the field was a bold example of using the practices of survey science to raise the status of field work by combining fact gathering with higher-level generalizing, although the response back in the metropole was less than enthusiastic. Upon his return to Britain in the 1860s, Wallace found that appreciation for observational facts he had gathered in the field was not accompanied by agreement with his theoretical interpretations and methods for doing human biogeography.     

A Delicate Adjustment: Wallace and Bates on the Amazon and “The Problem of the Origin of Species”

For over a century it has been believed that Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry Walter Bates set out for the Amazon in 1848 with the aim of “solving the problem of the origin of species”. Yet this enticing story is based on only one sentence. Bates claimed in the preface to his 1863 book that Wallace stated this was the aim of their expedition in an 1847 letter. Bates gave a quotation from the letter. But Wallace himself never endorsed or repeated this story. Many writers have acknowledged that this letter still survives. Yet the wording is different from that quoted by Bates and the letter says nothing of an expedition. It is argued that the sentence given by Bates is not a genuine quotation from this or any other Wallace letter but was modified by Bates to promote his own reputation. More significantly, this leads to the conclusion that there was a very sudden and dramatic shift in the way species were thought of and discussed after Darwin’s Origin of species appeared. Something called “the problem of the origin of species” (and similar variants) never occurred before Darwin’s book but exploded in frequency immediately after it. A profound change in how species origins were discussed happened which no one seemed to notice.     

Alfred Russel Wallace and the destruction of island life: the Iguana tragedy

The Galápagos Islands (Ecuador) are usually associated with the explorations and theoretical deductions of Charles Robert Darwin (1809–1882), but Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) also investigated these islands and published several reports on the living world of this unique archipelago. In contrast to Darwin, Wallace described the destruction of natural ecosystems by humans and foresaw the resulting extinction of species. Here, we outline two case studies pertinent to Wallace’s prediction. First, we summarize the behavior of the predator-naive marine iguanas (Amblyrhynchus cristatus) on the Galápagos Islands, which are threatened by feral dogs and cats imported by humans. We also describe the unique life cycle of the spiny-tailed iguana (Ctenosaura bakeri) from the island of Utila (Honduras), a rare species whose populations are declining because of habitat destructions. In contrast to these threatened, endemic island species, the Green iguana (Iguana iguana) is still widely distributed, although, as a result of de-forestation, in some areas of South America local populations have disappeared. We conclude that Wallace was correct in his prediction that, because of human activities, numerous species of animals and plants will be driven to extinction, notably on islands.     

The ornithologist Alfred Russel Wallace and the controversy surrounding the dinosaurian origin of birds

Over many years of his life, the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) explored the tropical forests of Malaysia, collecting numerous specimens, including hundreds of birds, many of them new to science. Subsequently, Wallace published a series of papers on systematic ornithology, and discovered a new species on top of a volcano on Ternate, where he wrote, in 1858, his famous essay on natural selection. Based on this hands-on experience, and an analysis of an Archaeopteryx fossil, Wallace suggested that birds may have descended from dinosaurian ancestors. Here, we describe the “dinosaur-bird hypothesis” that originated with the work of Thomas H. Huxley (1825–1895). We present the strong evidence linking theropod dinosaurs to birds, and briefly outline the long and ongoing controversy around this concept. Dinosaurs preserving plumage, nesting sites and trace fossils provide overwhelming evidence for the dinosaurian origin of birds. Based on these recent findings of paleontological research, we conclude that extant birds indeed descended, with some modifications, from small, Mesozoic theropod dinosaurs. In the light of Wallace’s view of bird origins, we critically evaluate recent opposing views to this idea, including Ernst Mayr’s (1904–2005) arguments against the “dinosaur-bird hypothesis”, and document that this famous ornithologist was not correct in his assessment of this important aspect of vertebrate evolution.     

A comparative analysis of the Darwin-Wallace papers and the development of the concept of natural selection

The classical theory of descent with modification by means of natural selection had no mother, but did have two English fathers, Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913). In 1858,the Linnean Society of London published two contributions of these naturalists and acknowledged both authors as the proponents of a novel hypothesis on the driving force of organismic evolution. In the present report the most important sections of the Darwin-Wallace papers are summarized. This close reading of both publications reveals six striking differences in emphasis: Darwin and Wallace did not propose identical ideas. The species definitions of both authors are described and the further development of the concept of natural selection in wild populations is reviewed. It is shown that the contributions of A.R. Wallace, who died 90 years ago, are more significant than usually acknowledged. I conclude that natural selection's lesser known co-discoverer should be regarded as one of the most important pioneers of evolutionary biology, whose original contributions are underestimated by most contemporary scientists.     

Book Reviews

Dumont, H.J., Tundisi, J.G. & Roche, K. (eds) (1990) Intrazooplankton Predation—Developments in Hydrobiology 60 .
Bnrescu, P. (1990) Zoogeography of Fresh Waters .
Wallace, I.D., Wallace, B. & Philipson, G.N. (1990) A Key to the Case-Bearing Caddis Larvae of Britain and Ireland .
Humpesch, U.H. & Elliott, J.M. (eds) (1990) Methods of Biological Sampling in a Large Deep River—The Danube in Austria .     

Resister's logic: the anti-vaccination arguments of Alfred Russel Wallace and their role in the debates over compulsory vaccination in England, 1870-1907

In the 1880s, Alfred Russel Wallace, the celebrated co-discoverer of natural selection, launched himself into the centre of a politicised and polarised debate over the unpopular compulsory vaccination laws in England. Wallace never wavered in his belief that smallpox vaccination was useless and likely dangerous. Six years before his death, the anti-vaccinationists successfully secured a conscience clause that effectively dismantled the compulsory vaccination laws. Several other important Victorian scientists joined Wallace in the fight to repeal compulsory vaccination arguing that widely held views on the effectiveness of vaccination and evidence for immunity were inconclusive in the light of (then) contemporary standards of evidence. This article situates Wallace's anti-vaccination logic within the broader matrix of sociopolitical and cultural reform movements of the late Victorian era. Additionally it provides the first detailed analysis of his critique of vaccination science, in particular the role statistics played in his arguments. In this period, both pro-vaccinationists and anti-vaccinationists invested great efforts in collating and analysing statistical data sets that either supported or refuted the claims of vaccination's effectiveness. While each side presented 'controlled' case studies to support their assertions, without an unambiguous test to measure or demonstrate vaccination's effectiveness, the anti-vaccinationists continued to mount credible statistical critiques of vaccination science.     

Evolution of sexual dichromatism in relation to nesting habits in European passerines: a test of Wallace's hypothesis

Wallace proposed in 1868 that natural rather than sexual selection could explain the striking differences in avian plumage dichromatism. Thus, he predicted that nesting habits, through their association with nest predation, could drive changes in sexual dichromatism by enabling females in cavity nesters to become as conspicuous as males, whereas Darwin (1871, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, John Murray, London) argued that sexual selection was the sole explanation for dichromatism. Sexual dichromatism is currently used as indicating the strength of sexual selection, and therefore testing Wallace's claim with modern phylogentically controlled methodologies is of prime interest for comparing the roles of natural and sexual selection in affecting the evolution of avian coloration. Here, we have related information on nest attendance, sexual dichromatism and nesting habits (open and cavity nesting) to male and female plumage conspicuousness in European passerines. Nest incubation attendance does not explain male or female plumage conspicuousness but nest type does. Moreover, although females of monochromatic and cavity nesting species are more conspicuous than females of other species, males of monochromatic and open nesting species are those with more cryptic plumage. Finally, analyses of character evolution suggest that changes in nesting habits influence the probability of changes in both dichromatism and plumage conspicuousness of males but do not significantly affect those in females. These results strongly suggest a role of nesting habits in the evolution of plumage conspicuousness of males, and a role for sexual selection also in females, both factors affecting the evolution of sexual dichromatism. We discuss our findings in relation to the debate that Darwin and Wallace maintained more than one century ago on the importance of natural and sexual selection in driving the evolution of plumage conspicuousness and sexual dichromatism in birds, and conclude that our results partly support the evolutionary scenarios envisaged by both extraordinary scientists.     

Alfred Russel Wallace, past and future

The naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) has for many years been standing in the shadow of his more famed co‐discoverer of the principle of natural selection, Charles Darwin. Despite outward similarities between the two men's formulation of the principle, Wallace had fit his appreciation of natural selection into views on evolution that were quite different from Darwin's. A closer examination of what Wallace had in mind suggests a model of process in which natural selection per se acts as the negative feedback mechanism (actually, a ‘state‐space’) in the relation between population and environment, and environmental engagement as made possible by the resulting selection of traits acts as the positive feedback part of the cycle. Thus, it may be better to contextualize adaptive structures as entropy‐relaying biogeochemical facilitators that only ‘generate a potential for evolution’ than to portray them as the end results of evolution. This systems point of view better lends itself to appreciations of the biogeographical context of evolution than does the tree‐thinking of a more conventional style of speciation‐focused Darwinism, which sometimes confuses process with result.     

1 July 1858: what Wallace knew; what Lyell thought he knew; what both he and Hooker took on trust; and what Charles Darwin never told them

At the Linnean Society on 1 July 1858, Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker, using only an extract from Charles Darwin's unpublished essay of 1844, and a copy of a recent letter to Asa Gray in Boston, argued successfully that Darwin understood how species originate long before a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace outlining his own version of the theory of evolution arrived at Darwin's home. That letter from Ternate in the Malay Archipelago, however, was not the first letter Darwin received from Wallace. This article will contend that two of the three letters Wallace sent Darwin between 10 October 1856 and 9 March 1858 arrived much earlier than Darwin recorded, thereby allowing him time to assess Wallace's ideas and claim an independent understanding of how the operation of divergence and extinction in the natural world leads strongly marked varieties to be identified as new species. By the time of the Linnean meeting Darwin's new ideas had filtered into his letters and ‘big’ species book, despite the absence of any independent evidence from the natural world to justify his constant insistence to have been guided only by inductive reasoning. © 2013 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2013, 109 , 725–736.