Summary: The biologist Alfred Russel Wallace was a pioneer of evolutionary theory. Born in 1823, he travelled extensively, charting the distribution of animal species throughout the world. In 1858 he sent his paper on the theory of evolution by natural selection to Charles Darwin, who was spurred into the publication of his own masterpiece On the Origin of Species. But despite his visionary work, Wallace has been overshadowed by the greater fame of Darwin. Melvyn Bragg is joined by Steve Jones, Emeritus Professor of Genetics at University College London; George Beccaloni, Director of the Wallace Correspondence Project at the Natural History Museum and Ted Benton, Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex.
