biography
| name: |
Wallace, Alfred Russel
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1823–1913)
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| biography:
| Naturalist, born in Usk, Monmouthshire, SE Wales, UK. He travelled and collected plant samples in the Amazon (1842–52) and the Malay Archipelago (1854–62), and propounded a theory of evolution by natural selection independently of Darwin. His memoir, sent to Darwin in 1858 from the Moluccas, formed an important part of the Linnaean Society meeting which first promulgated the theory, modifying and hastening the publication of Darwin's The Origin of Species. Wallace contributed greatly to the scientific foundations of zoogeography, including his proposal for the evolutionary distinction between the fauna of Australia and Asia (Wallace's line). |
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