His days surveying in the open air of the countryside lead him to an interest in natural history. Wallace began to read about mechanics and optics, his first introduction to science. Here on Wallace Online you can see, for the first time, some of the original maps he contributed to click here. Although Wallace's parents were perfectly orthodox members of the Church of England, Wallace became a sceptic or freethinker.įrom 1837 Wallace joined his brother William to work as an apprentice land surveyor.
The hall of science also introduced Wallace to the latest views of religious sceptics and secularists. Hence if the social environment were improved, so would the morals and well being of the workers. Wallace would eventually be deeply impressed by Owen's utopian social ideals - with a stress on the role of environment in determining character and behaviour. In this context (according to his later recollections) Wallace encountered the socialist ideas of the reformer Robert Owen. Wallace spent his London evenings in an educational "Hall of science" for working men. Wallace then left home to join his elder brother John, an apprentice builder in London. Wallace was not forced to leave school early because of financial difficulties, as commonly believed today, but left at the normal age for students not heading to university. Wallace left school aged fourteen in March 1837, shortly after Darwin returned from the Beagle voyage.
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Here Wallace attended Hertford Free Grammar School (it advertized itself as a school for the sons of gentlemen) and offered a classical education, very much like Charles Darwin's at Shrewsbury Free Grammar School, including Latin grammar, classical geography and "some Euclid and algebra". When Wallace was about six years old the family moved to Hertford, north of London, where he lived until he was fourteen. But financial circumstances declined so the family moved from London to a village near Usk, on the Welsh borders, where Wallace was born in Kensington Cottage on 8 January 1823.
His English father, a solicitor by training, once had property sufficient to generate a gentleman's income of £500 per annum. Unlike Darwin, Wallace came from a rather humble and ordinary background. A biographical sketch byĪlfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) was a great English naturalist who is primarily remembered for conceiving of a theory of evolution by natural selection independently of Charles Darwin.
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