Alfred Russel Wallace

Alfred Russel Wallace OM FRS was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, and biologist. He is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection his paper on the subject was jointly published with some of Charles Darwins writings in 1858. This prompted Darwin to publish his own ideas in On the Origin of Species. Wallace did extensive fieldwork, first in the Amazon River basin and then in the Malay Archipelago, where he identified the faunal divide now termed the Wallace Line, which separates the Indonesian archipelago into two distinct parts a western portion in which the animals are largely of Asian origin, and an eastern portion where the fauna reflect Australasia.

Alfred Wallace was born in the Welsh village of Llanbadoc, near Usk, Monmouthshire. He was the seventh of nine children of Thomas Vere Wallace and Mary Anne Greenell. Mary Anne was English Thomas Wallace was probably of Scottish ancestry. His family, like many Wallaces, claimed a connection to William Wallace, a leader of Scottish forces during the Wars of Scottish Independence in the 13th century. Thomas Wallace graduated in law, but never practised law. He inherited some incomegenerating property, but bad investments and failed business ventures resulted in a steady deterioration of the familys financial position. His mother was from a middleclass English family from Hertford, north of London. When Wallace was five years old, his family moved to Hertford. There he attended Hertford Grammar School until financial difficulties forced his family to withdraw him in 1836, when he was aged 14.

Source: Wikipedia