Educated at the Grammar School of Hertford, Wallace left school at the age of 14 and undertook an apprenticeship in surveying with his brother. He also taught at the Collegiate School at Leicester where he became interested in natural history and where he met the naturalist, Henry Walter Bates. In 1848, Wallace and Bates travelled to the Amazon to collect specimens and on returning to England in 1851, Wallace's ship caught fire and sunk and he was rescued at sea. Unfortunately, most of his specimen collection was lost. His travels in the Amazon were subsequently published as Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro (1853). From 1854 to 1862, Wallace travelled throughout the Indonesion and Malay archipelagos. In 1858, while on the Moluccas, Wallace evolved his theories on natural selection and evolution, which were communicated to Darwin. This subsequently led to their joint communication on the subject to the Linnaean Society. Wallace published The Malay Archipelago in 1869, and it soon became the definitive work on the subject. A prodigious writer, Wallace published a large number of scientific essays and papers. His other numerous works include Geographical Distribution of Animals (1876), Island Life (1880), Darwinism (1889), The Wonderful Century (1898), Man's Place in the Universe (1903) and his autobiography, My Life, in 1903. |
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