Alfred Russel Wallace

Alfred Russel Wallace was a Welsh naturalist? and biologist (1823-1913)

• He coined the Wallace's line to describe the hypothetical line separating Asia and Australia which separated the two continents and the species found. It runs through the Borneo-Celebes strait, southeast of the Philippines and east of Bali. In the mid 20th Century, geological studies of [plate tectonics]? showed there is an Indo-Australian plate that has Wallace's line as a border.

His studies of the Malay Archipelago led to him arrive independently at a theory of evolution similar to Charles Darwin's. Darwin at that time had not published his theory, but when Wallace sent him a memoir of his theories, asking him to forward it for publication, Charles Lyell and [Joseph Hooker]? advised Darwin that he should publish his own thoughts at the same time. Darwin did this in a paper presented to the Linnean Society of London in 1858.