Alfred Russel Wallace

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of Alfred Russel Wallace, a pioneer of evolutionary theory. Born in 1823, Wallace travelled extensively, charting the distribution of animal species throughout the world. This fieldwork in the Amazon and later the Malay Archipelago led him to formulate a theory of evolution through natural selection. In 1858 he sent the paper he wrote on the subject to Charles Darwin, who was spurred into the writing and publication of his own masterpiece On the Origin of Species. Wallace was also the founder of the science of biogeography and made important discoveries about the nature of animal coloration. But despite his visionary work, Wallace has been overshadowed by the greater fame of his contemporary Darwin.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Steve Jones 22 episodes
  Emeritus Professor of Genetics at University College London
• George Beccaloni No other episodes
  Curator of Cockroaches and Related Insects and Director of the Wallace Correspondence Project at the Natural History Museum
• Ted Benton No other episodes
  Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex

Reading list

• Alfred Russel Wallace: Explorer, Evolutionist and Public Intellectual - A Thinker For Our Own Time?
  T. Benton (Siri Scientific, 2013 forthcoming) Google Books →
• An Elusive Victorian: The Evolution of Alfred Russel Wallace
  M. Fichman (University of Chicago, 2004) Google Books →
• Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscence
  J. Marchant (Cassell, 1916) Google Books →
• Alfred Russel Wallace: A Life
  P. Raby (Chatto & Windus, 2001) Google Books →
• The Heretic in Darwin's Court: The Life of Alfred Russel Wallace
  R. A. Slotten (Columbia University Press, 2004) Google Books →
• Natural Selection and Beyond: The Intellectual Legacy of Alfred Russel Wallace
  C. H. Smith & G. Beccaloni (eds) (Oxford University Press, 2008) Google Books →
• My Life: A Record of Events and Opinions
  A. R. Wallace (Kessinger Publishing, 2004) Google Books →
• The Malay Archipelago
  A. R. Wallace (General Books, 2009) Google Books →

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Programme ID: b01r9rxr

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01r9rxr

Auto-category: 576.8 (Evolutionary biology)