150 Years of Natural Selection
(August 19th 2008) In 2009 the world will celebrate "Darwin year", the bicentenary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of his famous book On the Origin of Species (for many the pivotal work on the theory of evolution by natural selection). Some, however, have started the celebrations early, marking "150 Years of Natural Selection" in an effort to boost the profile of the "forgotten" co-discoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russell Wallace.
In fact, it was on July 1st 1858 that Sir Charles Lyell and Sir Joseph Hooker presented an essay by Alfred Russell Wallace and two unpublished excerpts from Charles Darwin's writings at a meeting of the Linnean Society of London. In these documents both authors independently explained the theory of natural selection. They were finally published together as the paper
On the Tendency of Species to Form Varieties; And On the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection in the Society's journal on August 20th of that year.
Many have said that after his return from his five year voyage aboard the
Beagle in 1836, Darwin "sat on the theory for 20 years". In fact, Darwin was working constantly on the idea. According to a 2007 paper by John van Whye he followed a preplanned sequence of study with the aim of backing up his ideas. However, when Darwin planned this research, he greatly underestimated the time it would take, and so it was dragged out from 8 to 20 years (
Notes and Records of the Royal Society 61: 177-205).
It was not until April 1856 that Darwin, for the very first time, divulged the essence of his theory of natural selection to the famous geologist Charles Lyell, a fellow of the Royal Society. Upon Lyell's advice he began to write a sketch of his ideas for publication which, however, he soon abandoned as unsatisfactory. Instead he began to write an extensive book on the subject.
The shock came two years later when Darwin received a letter from the British naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace. Wallace had already spent four years on an ambitious collecting expedition in Malaysia and Indonesia when, as he reported later, during an attack of fever, the idea of natural selection suddenly occurred to him. He wrote a detailed essay explaining the theory and sent it to Darwin, whom he already knew from correspondence. In the covering letter Wallace asked for Darwin's opinion on whether the essay was sufficiently interesting. If so, he asked him to pass it on to Charles Lyell, hoping that Lyell would ensure publication of the essay.
Darwin appealed to his friends Lyell and Joseph Hooker for advice on what to do. They decided first to present Wallace's essay along with Darwin's two excerpts from his writings at the upcoming meeting of the Linnean society and then to publish them. In the publication, Darwin's pieces were placed before Wallace's essay, thus emphasising Darwin's priority to the idea. Wallace later complained that his essay "É was printed without my knowledge, and of course without any corrections or proofs".
Nevertheless, Darwin and Wallace developed a mutual admiration and respect for one another. And although Wallace himself always stressed that Darwin had more claim to the idea, both were regarded as co-discoverers of the theory at least until Wallace's death in 1913. As documented, for example, by the
laudatio on the occasion of the presentation of the Linnean Gold Medal to Wallace when the president said: "É Your brilliant work [É] as one of the founders of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, is universally honoured and has often received public recognition, as in the awards of the Darwin and Royal Medals of the Royal Society, and of our own Medal in 1892." Wallace might have started work on the theory later than Darwin but it was recognised that he developed the theory independently and "published" it at the same time.
So it's incomprehensible that only Darwin's name remained linked to natural selection when the theory re-emerged - after three decades of unpopularity - with the modern synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s. Why Wallace disappeared so dramatically from public awareness is one of the greatest mysteries of science history.
Ralf Neumann
(For more information on Alfred Russell Wallace:
http://wallacefund.info/)
