Alfred Russel Wallace: Darwin's Little Brother

I love this time of year. It is like my Christmas and Easter rolled into a big burrito of spicy science goodness. This and next month hold the birthdays of both Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. Good stuff and the media is actually grasping hold of it (somewhat) and running with it. Amazingly, the library is actually out of all Darwin related books (and NOT the creationist ones). However, nothing is out on Wallace (and granted, we don't have that much, but still).

Just a few things to think about though. Both were great scientists and suffered much for their art (good science is indeed an art) but while Darwin was largely...well...rich and had land and leisure. And, damnit, he took the leisure seriously and put it to some good use. If Darwin was a great cerebralist then Wallace thought and worked with his heart.

My boy Wallace, he was a middle son from a middle class (if that) family and had to work hard for prominance and work he did. He worked as a surveyor, civil engineer and lecturer all before his early twenties. He hoped to make his fortune in the Amazon by collecting unknown species and then selling the collections to a museum. Thus providing him with income and a bed of research materials to last his career. Hard years of collecting and disease led him to quite an array of specimens that, unfortunately, were later lost when his ship caught on fire on the way back to merry-old-England.

Living off of some publications and lectures from his travels (I believe he even published a travel book, these being very popular at the time), Wallace continued to plan for the future. He headed to the Malay Archipelago on a mission similar to the in the Amazon. Especially looking for Birds of Paradise. During these explorations he refined his thoughts about evolution and wrote on of his seminal works -"The Malay Archipelago" which extremely popular and went through several printings.

This is where things turned on poor Wallace. Unable to aquire a museum or academic post, Wallace was forced to write articles and grade examinations to make a living. While this seems pretty standard for most scientists now, the time period tendedto lend itself to "gentleman and gentlewomen" naturalists. Even lobbying from Darwin couldn't get him a post but he did, after much work, get him supplied with a government pension for all of his previous service to state.

To shorten this up...Wallace began pissing people off. Why? Well, he got into some social issues. Mostly women's sufferage and peace movements. This plus a healthy delving into spiritualism caused his eventual fall from scientific and societal grace. Very unfortunate.

Either way, at his death, the New York Times reported that Wallace was one of "the last of the giants belonging to that wonderful group of intellectuals that included, among others, Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Lyell, and Owen, whose daring investigations revolutionized and evolutionized the thought of the century".

So. Cheers, Alfred! We love you, you crazy, progressive, hard-nosed, sonofabitch and happy goddamned birthday!