How Famous and Respected was Wallace?
By Alan Leyin (Thurrock Local History Society, Grays, Essex, UK).
Version 3, October 2014
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By Alan Leyin (Thurrock Local History Society, Grays, Essex, UK).
Version 3, October 2014
In an earlier post on this blog I mentioned that the Hertford Civic Society in conjunction with East Herts Council and Hertford Town Council have commissioned sculptor Rodney Munday to produce a large wall relief of Wallace, who received his only formal education at Hertford Grammar School (now named Richard Hale School). The finished work will be 2m high and it will be installed on an external wall of Hertford Theatre later this year.
I thought some readers might be interested in how much usage this website gets, so here is a Google Analytics report on usage from 1st Jan 2013 to 27th April 2014. I haven't investigated the possible causes of all the peaks in 2013 (Wallace's death centenary year), but the one in November was around the actual anniversary date - 7th November.
Wallace scholar Charles Smith has just published a nice little article in the latest edition of The Linnean (vol. 30, no. 1) which convincingly refutes the unfounded assertions relating to Wallace's "fame and respect" made by Darwin historian John van Wyhe in the new Cambridge Encyclopedia of Darwin and Evolutionary Thought.
By George Beccaloni
Prof. Indraneil Das, an ecologist and herpetologist with an interest in philately who works at the University of Malaysia Sarawak, recently sent me a copy of an interesting poster which he and a colleague produced for the recent Wallace conference in Sarawak about postage stamps featuring Wallace. Neil has kindly agreed that I can share it on this website - please see below.
Wallace on his 80th birthday - 8th January 1903
Tony Whitten, Asia-Pacific Regional Director of Fauna & Flora International and leader of the 'In the Wake of Wallace' cruise has sent us an account of the Wallace centenary celebrations in the town from which Wallace sent his world-changing letter to Charles Darwin on the mechanism of evolution:
A new sculpture of Wallace is to be made for the town of Hertford where Wallace went to school. Sculptor Rodney Munday has been awarded the commission to produce the piece and he has sent me the following article which explains the project:
I had been looking forward to reading John van Wyhe and Kees Rookmaaker's new book Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters from the Malay Archipelago as the adverts for it state that it contains "recently discovered letters".