A forgotten hero: Darwin's co-discoverer

From The Times

February 12, 2009

A forgotten hero: Darwin's co-discoverer

A little-known naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, also proposed the theory of natural selection - and this spurred Charles Darwin on to publish his great book.

Anjana Ahuja

In the 1850s, a bearded Victorian naturalist set sail for exotic shores, determined to discover the origin of species. He returned to England laden with once-living bounty - mostly birds, beetles and butterflies - which he dispersed, for modest sums, to museums and cultured gentlemen. He retained specimens for himself, the study of which furnished such papers as On the Law that has regulated the Introduction of New Species. His investigations would culminate, in 1858, in an explanation of evolution through natural selection.

This is not Charles Darwin, but Alfred Russel Wallace, who shared joint billing with Darwin on the paper that would set the elder scientist on the road to fame. The stirringly titled On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection, read out to the Linnean Society in Piccadilly on July 1, 1858, raised the controversial idea of natural selection. This argued that favourable traits in a species would result in greater reproductive success for the lucky ones that carried them, and these traits - such as a long neck for eating leaves from high branches - would gradually spread. This might slowly lead to new species (say, giraffes).

The story of what happened afterwards to Darwin and Wallace might well have been entitled “On the Tendency of Co-Discoverers of a Theory to Depart Indefinitely in Their Fortunes”. Darwin, whose reputation was sealed a year later with the publication of On the Origin of Species, lies entombed in Westminster Abbey, metaphorically rubbing shoulders with prime ministers and royalty. The bicentenary of his birth is being marked in grand fashion this week. Wallace lies in a small Dorset graveyard, flanked until recently by unchecked leylandii, his name and legacy largely unfamiliar beyond his family and a coterie of scientists and historians.

That Darwin is a national treasure and Wallace is not, is a “distortion of history”, according to Dr George Beccaloni, an entomologist at the Natural History Museum. “In his day, Wallace won every medal going, including an Order of Merit from the King,” says Beccaloni, the museum's curator of cockroaches and related insects. “But since then, Wallace's role has been played down by some modern historians, who have even suggested that his contribution was inferior to Darwin's. What I don't like is this accidental - or deliberate - distortion of history.” While Beccaloni declines to name names, the interpretation persists: for example, in a special Darwin issue of Science, Professor Peter Bowler, Professor of History of Science at Queen's University, Belfast, writes of “significant differences” in the ideas of the two.

Beccaloni, supported by Wallace's descendants, has long campaigned to win wider recognition for the forgotten codiscoverer of natural selection. He styles himself, only half-jokingly, as Wallace's rottweiler; a deliberate reference to Charles Lyell, an influential scientist who championed Darwin in his lifetime, who acquired the nickname Darwin's bulldog.

Beccaloni started a fund to restore Wallace's grave - the leylandii are now trimmed and a plaque added - and arranged for the Natural History Museum to buy correspondence and specimens from Wallace's grandson. He has edited a book on Wallace's breathtaking range of intellectual interests, which included spiritualism, social reform and epidemiology. And he is seeking to establish the ultimate memorial: the £1 million Wallace Correspondence Project, a database containing annotated copies of all the letters written by or sent to him, scattered among an estimated 100 libraries and institutions worldwide: “If the nation can find £50 million to save a painting, surely we can find the money for this.”

Apart from a shared interest in nature, Darwin and Wallace were very different men. Wallace, born the eighth of nine children in Wales to a Scottish father, could not match the elevated social position of Darwin, born 14 years earlier into wealth, with the blood of the Wedgwood family running through his veins. After sidestepping careers in medicine and the Church, Darwin turned his private passion for nature into a full-time pursuit by joining the Beagle voyage to South America in the early 1830s, during which he made extensive notes on geology, fossils and finches.

Wallace, a surveyor, pursued his scientific dreams by travelling to Brazil in 1848 and netting everything in sight for four years. He lost nearly everything when the ship sank on its way back to England. He and the crew were rescued and, back home, he lived on the insurance payout for two years, wrote six papers (one on monkeys) and two books on the Amazon. He also made contact with Darwin, by then a celebrated scientist.

Wallace sailed to the Malay Archipelago (now Malaysia and Indonesia), where his beetle-baiting knew no bounds. Of the 80,000 he collected, about 1,000 represented new species. He further depleted the Malay ecosystem of 40,000 other specimens, including mammals, birds, reptiles and shells. It was during this odyssey that Wallace began to form the idea of natural selection, reputedly while in a malarial fever. In 1858, he wrote an essay and sent it, by ship, to Darwin who had, by then, been sitting on the idea of natural selection for 20 years, despite warnings that others might pick up the scent and publish first. Horrified at the prospect of being scooped, Darwin sought the advice of two high-ranking scientists, writing: “All my originality, whatever it may amount to, will be smashed.” Under their tutelage, Darwin, mourning the death of a baby son from scarlet fever, submitted Wallace's essay - with some additions of his own - to the Linnean Society under both their names. A year later - breakneck speed for him - Darwin delivered On the Origin of Species, which became a bestseller.

Why has Darwin's name survived and Wallace's all but disappeared? Natural selection wasn't really taken up as an idea until the 1930s; scholars rediscovered it largely through Darwin's book. “They focused solely on Darwin, and their accounts hardly mentioned Wallace,” says Beccaloni. “The richness of the history has been lost, and, as a result, evolutionary biology has become very Darwinocentric.”

Fascinatingly, Darwin became less publicly wedded to natural selection during his life, while Wallace became more so. “Wallace was more Darwinian than Darwin,” Beccaloni muses. Wallace even wrote a book called Darwinism. Moreover, Darwin always shied away from addressing what evolution - he called it transmutation of species - meant for human beings. The idea that we might have animals among our ancestors, he considered, was too much for polite society to digest.

Still, Darwin, an undoubtedly brilliant scientist, devoted his life to working out how new species came about, while Wallace did not. Wallace's roving intellectual eye led him to champion women's suffrage and land reform, diluting his claim to fame.

Beccaloni's efforts have been welcomed by 85-year-old Richard Wallace, a retired farmer in Hampshire and one of Wallace's proud grandchildren. Richard and his brother John knew very little of their illustrious grandfather when they were growing up: “We knew that he'd been an eminent man in the 19th century but my father didn't talk about him. Of course, his star had fallen somewhat. It wasn't until the 1960s that people started recognising his achievements. Students used to come from America and rummage in our attic.”

Eventually, the family sold his letters and other artefacts to the Natural History Museum, although his bookcase and specimen cabinet remain in the family. The aptitude for science passed down the Wallace line - Richard's father, the youngest of the naturalist's three children, was an electrical engineer, Richard's son is a computer scientist and John was a maths teacher.

“We're very pleased that people such as George Beccaloni are pushing his case although, if Grandfather had been alive today, the lack of fame wouldn't have worried him much. He was a great friend of Darwin and, although Grandfather has been overlooked, his only concern was that the theory should come out.”

The Wallace dynasty has turned out to see its forebear receive the occasional honour - the unveiling of a portrait here, the creation of a plaque there - although “we are a bit long in the tooth now”. In doing so, they have crossed paths with the Darwins. What do they say to each other?

“We're never quite sure how the Darwins feel about the Wallaces,” Wallace says, simply. “They always choose their words rather carefully, we feel. But we get along fine. Grandfather had no resentment in him. He was not at all pugnacious; perhaps I've inherited his generous nature. He didn't mind that Darwin took all the credit.

“Darwin was too frightened of the Establishment to publish his theory of natural selection - he told his wife to publish it after he died. Then along came this young upstart, Grandfather, who wrote to Darwin saying: ‘This is how natural selection works, doesn't it?' and Darwin must have been quite shocked. he would not have published had his hand not been forced by grandfather's letter.”

Wallace delights in the effect his grandfather had on Darwin. And it is not implausible to suggest that On the Origin of Species owes its publication - and Darwin his fame - to Wallace's shock missive from Malay. Darwin was planning a huge definitive work on evolution but, after joint publication with Wallace, he was possibly inclined to speed things up a bit to strengthen his claim to priority. Says Beccaloni: “When Wallace's essay arrived, it probably prompted him to condense things (resulting in On the Origin of Species). Without Wallace's essay, he might have produced some huge turgid tome that nobody would have ever read, and so his theory might not have got the reception it did.”

There is no evidence of bad blood between Darwin and Wallace; the joint publication in 1858 benefited them both. Darwin the procrastinator was not pipped to the post; the young Wallace could bask in his association with the most fêted scientist of the day. Although Wallace once grumbled that he had not seen the proofs of their joint paper before it was read to the Linnean Society, and Wallace's dabbling in spiritualism (he believed in life after death) displeased some of Darwin's associates, the two men shared a deep mutual respect. Wallace dedicated his book The Malay Archipelago - said to be a favourite of Joseph Conrad's - to Darwin in 1869 and, when Wallace hit hard times (investments made from the sale of his specimens took a dramatic tumble), Darwin lobbied for him to be awarded a government pension. Wallace was a pallbearer at Darwin's funeral.

Richard Wallace does not regret that his family name is not as well-known as Darwin's: “It would have placed a huge burden on us. We are happy with the way things are, so long as Grandfather gets a fair hearing and he doesn't sink away. He was such a brilliant man. He wrote with such clarity, and had so many facets to his character. He had an opinion on everything, and I envy him his brain. We are very proud of the fact that we are direct descendants.”

Inquiries about the Wallace Correspondence Project should be sent to g.beccaloni@nhm.ac.uk