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Science 26 January 2007:
Vol. 315. no. 5811, p. 441
DOI: 10.1126/science.315.5811.441a
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After spending years collecting specimens in exotic locales, a young British naturalist dreams up an explanation for how one species transforms into another. The description fits Charles Darwin, but it also matches Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), the co-discoverer of natural selection and one of the 19th century's leading biologists. Wallace was also one of the founders of biogeography, the study of organisms' distribution.

A new online exhibit from the Natural History Museum in London documents Wallace's work and life with annotated selections from his writings and other memorabilia, such as a plate of a ring-tailed lemur from a 1900 collection of his articles. You can browse some of his travel dispatches, including the letter in which he describes the destruction of all his South American specimens in a shipboard fire. Other offerings indicate that Wallace didn't resent being overshadowed by the older scientist. For example, Wallace wrote a friend that he was "thankful that it has not been left to me to give the theory to the public."

www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/collections-at-the-museum/wallace-collection/themeslist.jsp




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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)