Alfred Russel Wallace

Shannon R. Wooden (Missouri State University)
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Perhaps best known today as a catalyst to, or coincidental co-developer of, Darwin’s theory of natural selection, a man whose life Steven Jay Gould laments as a “permanent footnote” in the popular history of science, Alfred Russel Wallace was actually a prominent scientist in his own right, deserving at his death the laudatory claims made by recent biographers: Martin Fichman hails Wallace as “one of the greatest Victorian naturalists” (11), and Gould describes him as “one of the most brilliant biologists and interesting men of nineteenth-century science” (xi). Though “all but vanished from popular consciousness” in the twenty-first century (n.p.), Wallace made numerous contributions to Victorian scientific thought, even besides that famous theory so striking in its…

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Citation: Wooden, Shannon R.. "Alfred Russel Wallace". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 January 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5574, accessed 28 March 2024.]

5574 Alfred Russel Wallace 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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