Perhaps best known today as a catalyst to, or coincidental co-developer of, Darwin’s theory of natural selection, a man whose life Steven Jay Gould laments as a “permanent footnote” in the popular history of science, Alfred Russel Wallace was actually a prominent scientist in his own right, deserving at his death the laudatory claims made by recent biographers: Martin Fichman hails Wallace as “one of the greatest Victorian naturalists” (11), and Gould describes him as “one of the most brilliant biologists and interesting men of nineteenth-century science” (xi). Though “all but vanished from popular consciousness” in the twenty-first century (n.p.), Wallace made numerous contributions to Victorian scientific thought, even besides that famous theory so striking in its…
2912 words
Citation: Wooden, Shannon R.. "Alfred Russel Wallace". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 January 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5574, accessed 27 November 2024.]
