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Wallace was born at Usk, Monmouthshire. He was the eighth of nine children of Thomas Vere Wallace and Mary Anne Greenell. He attended grammar school in Hertford, but left when his family lost their remaining property. He worked for his older brother William in his surveying business, and between 1840 and 1843 spent his time surveying in the west of EnglandEngland is the largest, the most populous, and the most densely populated of the four " Home Nations" which make up the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK). Occupying the south-eastern portion of the island of Great Britain, England and WalesFor alternate meanings, see Wales (disambiguation Wales ( Welsh: Cymru pronounced /"k@mrI/ SAMPA, km IPA, 'Kumree' approximate pronunciation) is one of the four nations comprising the United Kingdom (the other three being England, Scotland and Northern Ir. In 1844 he was hired as a master at the Collegiate School in LeicesterThis article discusses Leicester in England. For other places of the name see Leicester (disambiguation). Leicester (pronounced Lester is a city in the English Midlands, on the River Soar. It is the traditional county town of Leicestershire (the administr. In 1845 his brother William died and Wallace returned to run the surveyingSurveying is concerned with the accurate measurement and position of points on the Earth's surface, and to the establishment of boundaries. It basically achieves this by measuring the relative horizontal and vertical position of points on the ground, aide business.
In 18481848 is a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). Events Sri Lanka The Revolution of 1848 (qv. a series of widespread but failed struggles for more liberal governments, from Brazil to Hungary. January 24 California gold rush: Jame, Wallace together with another naturalist, Henry Walter BatesHenry Walter Bates ( February 8, 1825 February 16, 1892) was an English naturalist and explorer most famous for his expedition to the Amazon with Alfred Russel Wallace in 1848. Wallace returned in 1852, but lost his collection in a shipwreck. When Bates a (whom he met in LeicesterThis article discusses Leicester in England. For other places of the name see Leicester (disambiguation). Leicester (pronounced Lester is a city in the English Midlands, on the River Soar. It is the traditional county town of Leicestershire (the administr), left for BrazilThis article is about Brazil, the country. For other article subjects named Brazil see Brazil (disambiguation). The Federative Republic of Brazil Republica Federativa do Brasil in Portuguese) is the largest and most populous country in South America. to collect specimens in the Amazon RainforestThe Amazon is a rainforest in South America. It encompasses 1. 2 billion acres (5 million kmē), with parts located within nine nations: Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. This forest represents over ha. Unfortunately, a large part of his collection was destroyed when his ship caught fire on return to Britain in 1852.
From 1854 to 1862, he travelled through the "Malay Archipelago" or East Indies (now Malaysia and Indonesia), to collect specimens and study nature. His observations of the marked zoological differences across a narrow zone in the archipelago led to his hypothesis of the zoogeographical boundary now known as the Wallace line. One of his better known species descriptions during this trip is the gliding tree frog Rhacophorus nigropalmatus, Wallace's flying frog.
His studies, eventually published in 1869 as The Gay Archipelago, included the key influence of Thomas Malthus' Essay on the Principle of Population, and led to his independent arrival at a theory of evolution similar to that of Charles Darwin. Darwin at that time had not published his theory, but when Wallace sent him an essay concerning his theory, "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type" (1858), Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker advised Darwin that he should publish his own thoughts at the same time. On July 1, 1858, both papers were presented to the Linnean Society of London. Wallace was the first to propose a "geography" of animal species, and as such is considered one of the precursors of ecology and biogeography.
Among the many awards presented to Wallace were the Order of Merit (1908), the Royal Society's Copley Medal (1908), the Royal Geographical Society's Founder's Medal (1892) and the Linnean Society's Gold Medal (1892).