Alfred Russel Wallace

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.8K Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2013

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of Alfred Russel Wallace, a pioneer of evolutionary theory. Born in 1823, Wallace travelled extensively, charting the distribution of animal species throughout the world. This fieldwork in the Amazon and later the Malay Archipelago led him to formulate a theory of evolution through natural selection. In 1858 he sent the paper he wrote on the subject to Charles Darwin, who was spurred into the writing and publication of his own masterpiece On the Origin of Species. Wallace was also the founder of the science of biogeography and made important discoveries about the nature of animal coloration. But despite his visionary work, Wallace has been overshadowed by the greater fame of his contemporary Darwin.

With:

Steve Jones Emeritus Professor of Genetics at University College London

George Beccaloni Curator of Cockroaches and Related Insects and Director of the Wallace Correspondence Project at the Natural History Museum

Ted Benton Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex

Producer: Thomas Morris.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
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0:36.0	Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time.
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0:43.2	UK slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the program.
0:47.0	Hello in the reign of Queen Victoria a young British naturalist
0:51.0	travelled to remote parts of the world, collecting vast numbers of animals
0:54.5	and plants in an attempt to understand where species came from and how they change.
0:59.5	He published a best-selling account of his travels, and in 1858 proposed a theory of evolution by natural
1:04.8	selection, an event which made the scientist famous and forever changed our understanding of life
1:09.5	on Earth.
1:10.5	The scientist I'm describing isn't Charles Darwin, although the facts fit his life as well, but his contemporary Alfred Russell Wallace.
1:17.0	Wallace was a remarkable self-taught biologist, he left school at 14, who came up with the theory of evolution independently of Darwin.
1:24.9	He was famous during his lifetime not just as an evolutionary scientist, but as the greatest
1:29.0	authority on the geographical distribution of annual species. But since his death his reputation has declined.
1:35.0	Today his name is far less well known than that of Darwin,
1:38.0	although arguably both men played a significant role in the development of evolutionary theory.
1:43.2	With me to discuss the work of Alfred Russell Wallace are Steve Jones,
	...

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