Alfred Russel Wallace's Theory Of Natural Selection

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Biography Alfred Russel Wallace was born on January 8, 1823 in Usk, Monmouthshire , wales. Alfred’s early years consisted in his family being very poor and at the age of six him and his eight siblings had to move to Hertford town which was north of London. Alfred’s father, Thomas Vere Wallace had enough money to pay for Alfred’s school in which he attended at Hertford Grammar school. He attended in geometry, geography, and in algebra. But that all lasted until he was 14 years old, his father could no longer pay for his education which resulted in him not having any further education. Alfred went to London in search for a job. In 1844, he got a job as a teacher in the town of Lester to teach drafting, surveying, English, and arithmetic. On his …show more content…

In the eight years that he was in South East Asia, Alfred’s collection consisted of 110,000 insects, 7,500 shells, 8,050 bird skins, and 410 mammal specimens and many more new species. In these findings he discovered a new Borneo Bay cat, the world’s biggest bee called Megachile Pluto, Wallace's Golden Birdwing Butterfly, and Wallace's Standard-Wing Bird of Paradise. Later on in 1855, Alfred wrote his paper on his findings on the Theory of evolution and on natural selection. Also he sent a letter to Charles Darwin to pass it down to Charles Lyell. A year later in April 1856 there was a controversy of who actually discovered, The Theory of evolution, because Charles Darwin had actually discovered is twenty years earlier. In May 1856 , this forced Darwin to write his information down and publish it before it was to late. In October 1856, Charles Darwin instead actually starts to write a new version about evolution its self. Due to all this Charles immediately goes to a meeting of the Linnaean Society of London on 1 July 1858 to present Wallace’s work without his consent and he takes his findings along with him. This resulted in both Wallace and Darwin’s work to be published together in the Society's journal