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On Friday 18th December 2009, on Founder’s Day and after the White Gloves Ceremony, the Richard Hale Association was pleased to unveil a plaque of Alfred Russel Wallace at the School. The plaque was unveiled by Dr Keith Maybury, Vice President of the Linnean Society of London. Wallace was educated at the school between 1828 and 1835. During his travels in the Amazon between 1848 and 1852 he began to give thought to the nature of speciation and the factors limiting species distribution. In April, 1854 he arrived in Singapore at the start of his expedition to the Malay Archipelago. In eight years he travelled 14,000 miles within the Archipelago where he collected 125,660 specimens, including over 1,000 animal species previously unknown to science. Some of these are named after him. This journey resulted in his two greatest discoveries, natural selection and zoo-geographical boundaries. In January, 1858, Wallace wrote his famous paper on natural selection. This paper, together with an essay written by Charles Darwin, was read at a meeting of the Linnean Society of London on 1st July, 1858. Wallace, as Darwin acknowledged, independently discovered the theory of natural selection and was the first to write a paper for publication on the subject. Later Wallace noted striking differences between the bird faunas of Bali and Lombok which are separated by the 25km Makassar Strait. Hence he discovered the separation of Oriental and Australasian faunal regions. The line of separation passing along the Makassar Strait, between Celebes and Borneo, and the Moluccas and Phillipines is famously known as the Wallace Line. Often described as “The Forgotten Naturalist”, his publications included 22 books and 508 scientific papers. He is commemorated by a memorial plaque on the floor of Westminster Abbey. The Richard Hale Association, of former pupils, also commemorates Wallace by funding an annual Alfred Russel Wallace Travel and Education Scholarship to enable young members to travel and study throughout the world. |
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