Victorian naturalist's extensive collection of specimens and papers appear together for first time in online project
Ian Sample The Guardian 27 Sep 12;
Alfred Russel Wallace arrived in Singapore in 1854 with a simple plan in mind. He would survey the region's wildlife and ship specimens back to London for sale to museums and wealthy collectors. His financial security rested on the foreign exotica for which Victorians had a seemingly insatiable appetite.
The British naturalist amassed thousands of insects and birds during eight years in southeast Asia. And though Wallace's strange creatures sold for good money back home, the collection had a more profound value. Through studying the animals, Wallace hit on one of the world's greatest scientific discoveries: the theory of evolution through natural selection.
Wallace's work on the theory, along with major insights into biodiversity, are described in thousands of pages of books, articles, drawings and paintings, which appear together for the first time today, in a web project directed by John van Wyhe, a historian at the National University of Singapore. The Wallace Online project was funded by an anonymous US donor, and comes ahead of next year's centenary of Wallace's death.
Wallace's publications were distributed among thousands of magazines and newspapers, and had never been collected together in one place. The project contains 28,000 pages of searchable documents and 22,000 images. They include stunning pictures of blue-throated bee eaters, asian fairy-bluebirds and meticulous drawings of butterflies and beetles.
Van Wyhe, who directed a similar project for Darwin's works several years ago, said the Wallace collection was intended as a reliable source of information on the naturalist whose name was so eclipsed by Darwin's. "This needed to be done for Wallace. He's far less well known than Darwin, and it's high time people had reliable material on his work," van Wyhe said.
The history of science is littered with names overlooked, but few so much as Wallace. In July 1858, the first papers on natural selection were read aloud at the Linnean Society in London, one from Darwin, the other from Wallace. Though both men announced the theory at the same time, Darwin's publication, On the Origin of Species, the following year was the seed of revolution that made senior scientists take notice.
The book was not the only factor. Victorian modesty played a part in Wallace's diminished place in history, and perhaps some deference to what he, a poor and unprivileged man, saw as the great figures of science. "The Victorians were falling over themselves to be more modest than everybody else. Modesty was a high virtue. So Wallace, from the very beginning, referred to it as Darwin's theory, and he never relented to the end of his life," said van Wyhe.
From 1855, Wallace published a series of articles that came ever closer to declaring the theory of evolution through natural selection. In the midst of a malarial fever, on the island of Ternate in Indonesia, he had a moment of clarity, that many are born, lots die, and only a few survive. He sent an essay from the island to Darwin, who passed it to the great geologist, Charles Lyell, who then proposed it to the Linnean Society alongside an essay from Darwin.
"It's one of the greatest ironies in history. Wallace sends his essay to the one man in the world who has been working on this for 20 years. And Darwin, again the perfect gent, passes it to Lyell, and they decide to publish essays from them both," said van Wyhe.
Wallace's thorough survey of wildlife led to another breakthrough in 1859, known today as the Wallace line. He noticed that species on either side of an invisible line between Australia and Asia were substantially different, despite being close geographical neighbours. The observation clashed with the thinking of the day, that species were created for their particular environment. Wallace proposed the animals came from two ancient, larger landmasses, a Super Asia and a Super Australia, which had long since sunk beneath the waves. "He couldn't have imagined plate tectonics, which is the real explanation, and that Australia started out in South America," said van Wyhe.
Among Wallace's other writings are notes on local cuisine. In a passage on the durian fruit, Wallace describes a large coconut-sized fruit with short, stout spines, liable to fall from trees and cause spectacular wounds to the unwary. "When brought into a house the smell is often so offensive that some persons can never bear to taste it. This was my own case when I first tried it in Malacca, but in Borneo I found a ripe fruit on the ground, and, eating it out of doors, I at once became a confirmed Durian eater," he writes. Having declared the taste almost impossible to describe, he offers "a rich butter-like custard, highly flavoured with almonds gives the best general idea of it, but intermingled with it come wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, brown sherry, and other incongruities".
In other papers, Wallace laments the rate at which species are being forced to extinction, and makes one of the earliest calls for conservation. He likens species to letters that make up the volumes of Earth's history, and their loss obliterating an invaluable record of the past.
"Future ages will certainly look back upon us as a people so immersed in the pursuit of wealth as to be blind to higher considerations," he writes from the Malay archipelago in 1863.
Evolution theorist Alfred Russel Wallace goes online
Jonathan Amos BBC News 27 Sep 12;
The great naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace now has an online presence to match that of Charles Darwin.
The two men independently formulated the theory of evolution by natural selection, and announced it in tandem in July 1858
But it is one of those quirks of history that Darwin got all the fame.
His collected works were digitised and posted on the web in 2006. Now, the writings and drawings of Wallace have received the same treatment.
The effort has been completed by the same historian, too - John van Wyhe.
But whereas Dr van Wyhe produced Darwin Online from Cambridge University, UK, he has led the new Wallace Online project from the National University of Singapore (NUS).
Wallace was a major scientific figure in South East Asia.
"What this should hopefully do is result in a major upgrade in the quality of writing about Wallace," the historian told BBC News.
"Next year is the centenary of his death. Just like 2009 was the big Darwin year, 2013 will be the big Wallace year. And I hope now that people have access to all of his literature, it will make a big difference to what they say and write about him."
Wallace Online gathers together in one place for the first time all of the naturalist's writings and illustrations.
There are 28,000 pages of searchable documents and 22,000 images. Among the online gems is that first announcement of the theory of evolution delivered to a London scientific meeting 154 years ago.
It remains one of the great coincidences in scientific history that the one person Wallace should choose to approach to share his ideas on natural selection was the only other scientist who separately had come to the same conclusions - Charles Darwin.
Quite why Wallace never achieved a similar level of fame has long been debated, but the lower profile should not be seen as a reflection on the man's talents or achievements, argues Dr van Wyhe.
The Wallace Online collection certainly bears testament to a prolific output. Like Darwin, Wallace was also a great traveller, spending large chunks of time in Brazil (1848-1853) and in South East Asia (1854-1862).
"It's very appropriate that we've done Wallace Online from NUS because Wallace was the pioneering figure in the study of this part of the world," said Dr van Wyhe.
"He spent eight years here, using Singapore as his base. He made major discoveries - he discovered hundreds of new species, going to places no naturalist had ever gone to before. And then, of course, there is The Wallace Line."
The Wallace Line is a term still in use today and refers to the sharp division between the types of animals in Australia and those on the Asian archipelago.
Wallace identified this abrupt transition, but could not satisfactorily explain it. Nor would he have been able to.
It is only with the 20th Century theory of plate tectonics that scientists can now describe how Australia, with its unique flora and fauna, was delivered from another part of the globe and abutted to South East Asia.
Dr van Wyhe said: "Wallace is an amazing example of somebody who had no privilege, no wealth, no connections - and who went out on his own to make his own way in the world; and he discovered so many amazing things, not just evolution.
"That's why for so many people, he remains such an inspiring figure.
"He's the sort of person that you can aspire to be. You can just do it yourself through independent thinking and hard work."
