Naturalist 1823-1913

Alfred Russel Wallace was born on January 8, 1823, in Usk, Great Britain (Wales). He died at the age of 90 on November 7, 1913. Wallace developed a theory of evolution by natural selection independently of Charles Darwin but at nearly the same time. He also founded the field of animal geography, the study of where animals occur on Earth.

As a boy Wallace had a great interest in plants and collected them. In 1844 he began teaching at a boy's school, the Collegiate School in Leicester, Leicestershire, England. There he met the British naturalist Henry Walter Bates, who got him interested in insects. In 1848 Wallace and Bates began a four-year expedition to the Amazon. Unfortunately, the ship sank on the return voyage, and most of Wallace's collected specimens were lost. In 1853 he published a book about the journey. In 1854 Wallace began an eight-year tour of the Malay...