Alfred Russel Wallace on Postage Stamps
This poster is provided by Dr. George Beccaloni, who received it from Prof. Indraneil Das, an ecologist and herpetologist with an interest in philately who works at the University of Malaysia Sarawak. Prof. Das and a colleague created this poster for the Wallace conference in Sarawak in 2013 (the year of 100th anniversary of Wallace's death).
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer,
anthropologist and
biologist.
He is best known for independently proposing a theory of evolution due to natural selection
that prompted Charles Darwin to
publish his own theory.
Wallace did extensive fieldwork, first in the Amazon River basin and then in the Malay Archipelago,
where he identified the Wallace Line that divides the Indonesian archipelago into two distinct
parts,
one in which animals closely related to those of Australia are common, and one in which the species
are
largely of Asian origin.
He was considered the 19th century's leading expert on the geographical distribution of
animal species and is sometimes called the "father of biogeography".
For more details about Wallace contribution to Evolutionary Biology please go here.
