Figure timeline
Alfred Russel Wallace was an English naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and illustrator. 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 writings on the topic. It spurred Darwin to set aside the "big species book" he was drafting and to quickly write an abstrac…
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
science · English naturalist (1823–1913) · mathematician · explorer · anthropologist · zoologist · naturalist · anti-vaccine activist · ornithologist · entomologist · geographer · beekeeper · also Alfred Russel Wallace, Alfred R. Wallace, Alfred Wallace, Wallace, A. R. Wallace, Wallace, Alfred Russel
Born 8 January 1823 · Died 7 November 1913 · Q160627
88 published statements · 0 followers
See & hear
14 photos
Media from Wikimedia Commons, hotlinked at the source under its own licence — see each file for author and terms.
Live now
Pulling headlines from trusted outlets — this usually takes a few seconds
Checking the wires…
Feed scan
These are live links, not archived citations — they only join the timeline once a collect run verifies and archives them.
Live pulse
Most recent outstanding titles, awards, and quotes
“That such a moth exists in Madagascar may be safely predicted; and naturalists who visit that island should search for it with as much confidence as astronomers searched for the planet Neptune,—and they will be equally successful!”
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
“belong to two quite distinct zoological provinces, of which they form the extreme limits”
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
“for Mr. Darwin & he would perhaps also like the jungle cock, which is often domesticated here & is doubtless one of the originals of the domestic breed of poultry.”
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
The Guardian: A Close Shave/A Matter of Loaf and Death review – Wallace and Gromit knit together a cracking double bill
Nature: Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences
Nature: Alfred Russel Wallace: The Story of a Great Discoverer
MutualArt.com: Alfred Russel Wallace.
Phys.org: Beyond evolution: Alfred Russel Wallace's critique of the 19th century world
EurekAlert!: Alfred Russel Wallace: Co-Founder of the Theory of Biological Evolution (IMAGE)
The Conversation: How many people helped Alfred Russel Wallace?
Inverse: "Sarawak Law": Follow Alfred Russel Wallace's Footsteps to Borneo's Jungle
Published “GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral” in Physical Review Letters — cited 8,280 times.
Published “Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger” in Physical Review Letters — cited 11,729 times.
New Scientist: Alfred Russel Wallace: A very rare specimen
EurekAlert!: Alfred Russel Wallace: Co-founder of the theory of biological evolution
Published “Carbon-Based Supercapacitors Produced by Activation of Graphene” in Science — cited 5,887 times.
Published “Processable aqueous dispersions of graphene nanosheets” in Nature Nanotechnology — cited 8,641 times.
Published “Genome-wide association study of 14,000 cases of seven common diseases and 3,000 shared controls” in Nature — cited 7,937 times.
Published “Clustal W and Clustal X version 2.0” in Bioinformatics — cited 25,004 times.
Historian of science Michael Shermer published a quantitative analysis of Wallace's publications
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Published “High-κ gate dielectrics: Current status and materials properties considerations” in Journal of Applied Physics — cited 5,472 times.
Published “A Short Physical Performance Battery Assessing Lower Extremity Function: Association With Self-Reported Disability and Prediction of Mortality and Nursing Home Admission” in Journal of Gerontology — cited 8,115 times.
The Royal Entomological Society mounted a year-long expedition to the Dumoga-Bone National Park in North Sulawesi named Project Wallace
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
A house at Richard Hale School (then called Hertford Grammar School, where he had been a pupil) was named after Wallace
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
“s suffrage. In a letter read at a 1909 woman”
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Died 1913-11-07.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Wallace published his final views on evolution, natural selection, and design in The World of Life : A Manifestation of Creative Power, Directive Mind and Ultimate Purpose where he discussed among other things, the distr
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
With aviation in its infancy, he advocated an international treaty to ban the military use of aircraft, arguing against the idea "that this new horror is 'inevitable', and that all we can do is to be sure and be in the f
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Awarded Order of Merit (1908).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Won Copley Medal (1908).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Won Darwin–Wallace Medal (1908).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Wallace returned to the subject with the book Is Mars Habitable
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Wrote a paper advocating a pure paper money system, not backed by silver or gold, which impressed the economist Irving Fisher so much that he dedicated his 1920 book Stabilizing the Dollar to Wallace
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Wallace wrote a pamphlet, Vaccination a Delusion; Its Penal Enforcement a Crime, attacking the commission's findings
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Wallace published The Wonderful Century: Its Successes and Its Failures, about developments in the 19th century
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Awarded Fellow of the Royal Society (1893).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Won Linnean Medal (1892).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Won Founder’s Medal (1892).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
In the paper "English and American Flowers"
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Won Darwin Medal (1890).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Wrote a critical review in Nature of his friend Edward Bagnall Poulton's The Colours of Animals which supported Darwin on sexual selection, attacking especially Poulton's claims on the "aesthetic preferences of the in
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Wallace gave evidence to a royal commission investigating the controversy
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Wallace read Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy and declared himself a socialist, despite his earlier foray as a speculative investor
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
In response to a paper by George Romanes that suggested that natural selection alone was insufficient to explain the separation of incipient species
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Wallace wrote the book Darwinism, which explained and defended natural selection
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Awarded Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi (1885).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
It helped to stabilise Wallace's financial position by supplementing the income from his writings
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Wallace was elected as the first president of the newly formed Land Nationalisation Society
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Wallace published the book Island Life as a sequel to The Geographical Distribution of Animals
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Published Island Life as a sequel to The Geographic Distribution of Animals
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Darwin first tried to rally support among naturalists to get a civil pension awarded to Wallace, Joseph Hooker responded that "Wallace has lost caste considerably, not only by his adhesion to Spiritualism, but by the fac
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Wallace needed a £500 advance from the publisher of The Geographical Distribution of Animals to avoid having to sell some of his personal property
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
And served as the definitive text on zoogeography for the next 80 years
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Published the evidence he believed proved his position in On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Wallace visited the spirit photographer Frederick Hudson
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
After the publication of a number of new works on classification
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
At the urging of many of his friends, including Darwin, Philip Sclater, and Alfred Newton, Wallace began research for a general review of the geographic distribution of animals
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Wallace built the Dell, a house of concrete, on land he leased in Grays in Essex, where he lived until 1876
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Career landmark: President of the Royal Entomological Society (1870–1871).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
“no opponents left who know anything of natural history, so that there are none of the good discussions we used to have”
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
A flat-Earth proponent named John Hampden offered a £500 wager (roughly equivalent to £51,000 in 2025) in a magazine advertisement to anyone who could demonstrate a convex curvature in a body of water such as a river, ca
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Weir published data from experiments and observations involving brightly coloured caterpillars that supported Wallace's idea
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Won Royal Medal (1868).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
And its Darwin Medal in 1890, and the Order of Merit in 1908
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Darwin wrote to Wallace about a problem in explaining how some caterpillars could have evolved conspicuous colour schemes
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
And of the Entomological Society of London in 1870
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Wallace married Annie Mitten
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
To a young woman whom, in his autobiography, he would only identify as Miss L
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
In the aforementioned paper, he stated "It is the same great law of the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life, which leads to the inevitable extinction of all those low and mentally undeveloped populatio
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Was the first to propose that during the later stages of human evolution natural selection would have primarily acted on mental faculties rather than on the physical form
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
“Remarks on the Rev. S. Haughton's Paper on the Bee's Cell, And on the Origin of Species”
That particularly pleased Darwin, Wallace published the short paper "Remarks on the Rev
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Became one of the staunchest defenders of Darwin's On the Origin of Species
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Wallace returned to Britain, where he moved in with his sister Fanny Sims and her husband Thomas
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
“On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type”
Sent an article outlining his theory to Darwin; it was published, along with a description of Darwin's theory, that same year
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
“On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species”
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Were briefly joined by another young explorer, the botanist Richard Spruce, along with Wallace's younger brother Herbert
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Wallace and Bates left for Brazil aboard the Mischief
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
And a letter Darwin had written to Asa Gray in 1857
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Wrote to Bates that he would "like to take some one family [of beetles] to study thoroughly,
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
“an ingenious hypothesis strongly supported by some striking facts and analogies, but which remains to be proven by ... more research”
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Describing it as "an ingenious hypothesis strongly supported by some striking facts and analogies, but which remains to be proven by
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Was engaged by the Collegiate School in Leicester to teach drawing, mapmaking, and surveying
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Wallace's father died, and a decline in demand for surveying meant William's business no longer had work available
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Expressing support for transmutation, Lyell had continued to be strongly opposed to the idea
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
To live with William and work as his apprentice for six years
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Born 1823-01-08.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Connections