Yet even within their lifetimes this theory that shook the world was often credited solely to Darwin. Darwin frequently acknowledged not only that his fellow naturalist had come up with the same notions independently, but also that realising someone else was on the same trail had spurred him to stop mulling over his own ideas on evolution and get them published. Wallace’s contribution is not in dispute. Sooner or later others would have got to the same point, and made the same, or a very similar, breakthrough. But in reality we’re celebrating those who first articulated, or in some cases first popularised, ideas whose time had come. Each was often years or even decades ahead of others in their field, and richly deserves their fame. Whether it’s Archimedes or Einstein, Curie or Hawking, Tesla or whoever, we celebrate them as extraordinary individuals who bucked convention and made momentous advances. The story of Wallace and Darwin is a prime example of how time and again we take collaborative, iterative achievements and present them as the work of lone geniuses with Eureka flashes of insight. And the theory they both independently devised and jointly published is that of evolution through natural selection. But in this case the other guy is Charles Darwin. This might not seem so unjust if the same fate had befallen the other guy. Yet he has spent most of the century since his death in relative obscurity. Wallace was feted during his lifetime, and has had hundreds of species, various buildings and even craters on the Moon and Mars named after him.
And in case that’s not commemoration enough, a newly discovered genus of wasps has been named Wallaceaphytis in his honour. Sir David Attenborough unveiled the statue, and I’m hosting a fundraising event for it on Saturday, featuring evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and comedian Bill Bailey. The first ever statue of Alfred Russel Wallace was erected outside the Natural History Museum in London last week.
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