Alfred Russel Wallace was born in 1823 in Wales. He has been variously described as a naturalist, a geographer, and a social critic. He even chimed in on the debate over whether life could exist on Mars. His work on the theory of natural selection, however, is what he is best known for. During the second half of the nineteenth century, he became a public figure in England, known for his courageous views on scientific, social, and spiritualist subjects. His formulation of the theory of evolution by natural selection, which predated Charles Darwin's published contributions, is his most notable legacy, but it was only one of many contentious issues he studied and wrote about during his lifetime.
