Abstract

There are few more likeable figures in the history of science than Alfred Russel Wallace. A warm-hearted and generous man, he won the admiration of virtually all who knew him for what one contemporary called ‘the charm of his personality’. Typical of this charm was his behaviour over the potentially sensitive question of his co-authorship with Darwin of the theory of natural selection. Ignoring all the disputes which might so easily have followed the events of 1858, Wallace never ceased to give Darwin all the credit for their theory. In 1864, the author of theOriginchided the younger man for his deference, writing, ‘you ought not … to speak of the theory as mine; it is just as much yours as mine. One correspondent has already noticed to me your “high-minded” conduct on this head’. But Wallace's reply was equally firm, ‘As to the theory of Natural Selection itself, I shall always maintain it to be actually yours and yours only’. If anyone is responsible for the comparative neglect from which the ‘other man’ of Darwinism has suffered, it is the other man himself.