Alfred Russel Wallace

• Poorly adapted to change were likely to die out, leaving only the better adapted form to survive and breed
• Wallace dashed off a quick paper and sent it to the one man he thought would be really interested and help him get things published - Charles Darwin
• When Darwin received Wallace's paper

  He panicked - after 20 years of careful work, would someone else publish before him?
• Darwin's friends advised him to produce an extract, summarising his main findings and publish it at the same time as Wallace
• Wallace's ideas were not as carefully crafted as Darwin's, and they were not backed up by years of research
• The very next year, The Origin of Species was published and Darwin became forever associated with the theory of evolution by natural selection
• Wallace and Darwin continued to work in mutual support and friendship for many years, their respect for each other far outweighing any rivalry
• Wallace worked worldwide gathering evidence for his evolutionary theories
• Wallace developed clear theories on the role of geographic isolation in the formation of species