Wallace, Alfred Russel
(1823-1913). English naturalist and evolutionist famous for having propounded, almost simultaneously with Charles Darwin, the origin of the species by natural selection. He joined the Theosophical Society (TS) in 1876. Wallace was born at Usk Monmouthshire on January 8, 1823. He gained many distinctions; he was awarded The Order of Merit in 1910 and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Wallace’s important work Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection was published in 1870 and in it he differed from Darwin, contending that man had not, like other animals, been produced by the unaided operation of natural selection, but that other forces had been in operation. In 1875 he was involved in investigation into psychic phenomena and in the same year published Miracles and Modern Spiritualism in which he gave experimental reasons for his beliefs. Wallace congratulated Helena P. BLAVATSKY on her book Isis Unveiled saying, “I am amazed at the vast amount of erudition displayed in the chapters, and the great interest of the topics on which they treat” (CW I:323). He had earlier been in correspondence with Henry OLCOTT, first President of the TS, who had sent Wallace a copy of his book People From the Other Worlds (1875). He died at Broadstone in Dorset, England, November 7, 1913.
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