The BBC's Great Lives program for today is about Alfred Russel Wallace. Richard beat me to it, and I saw it on Derkeiler, where John Wilkins of Evolving Thoughts commented. This is the summary of the program:Travel writer Redmond O’Hanlon proposes the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who so nearly scooped Darwin. Dr Sandy Knapp and presenter Matthew Parris help to explain a truly extraordinary life.
A few Wallace links:
Wallace Collection at NHM of London
from December's issue of the Journal of the History of Biology: "Wallace, Darwin, and the Practice of Natural History"
1 comments:
There were a few inaccuracies in this otherwise nice programme - one being the comment by the presenter that "There isn't a single place in Britain dedicated to his [Wallace's] achievements save a bench on the River Usk opposite the cottage where he was born." As the Chairman and founder of the A. R. Wallace Memorial Fund I feel obliged to point out that there are actually quite a number of plaques and other monuments to Wallace in England and Wales, although it is fair to say that their existence is not widely known about! The most recent monuments have been paid for by the Wallace Memorial Fund and are as follows:-
In 2000 Wallace’s grave in Broadstone, Dorset was restored by the Fund and a bronze commemorative plaque was installed on the grave surround. The grave features a 7 foot tall fossil tree trunk mounted on a block of Purbeck limestone. See http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=6416
In 2002 a plaque was unveiled on “The Dell”, the house which Wallace built in 1872 in Grays, Essex with money he earned from the amazing natural history collections he made in south-east Asia.
A plaque unveiled in 2005 on the garden wall of “Treeps”, the house in Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex were Wallace wrote his book "The Malay Archipelago".
A monument was erected in 2006 in Usk, Wales, outside the church where Wallace was baptised and close to the cottage where he was born. See:-
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/news/2006/may/news_8252.html
http://www.monmouthshiregreenweb.co.uk/UskCivicSociety/Newsletter2006.htm
For more information about the above monuments see http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/wallace/news.htm
The other memorials I am aware of are as follows: a plaque outside the Usk Rural Life Museum (in the Malt Barn, New Market Street, Usk, Wales); a plaque on the house at 11 St. Andrew's Street in Hertford were Wallace may have lived for a time when he was a child; a plaque on the wall of the “Mechanics' Institute” in Church Place, Neath, Wales (which is now used as offices by the Neath Museum) which Wallace and his brother John designed in 1846; a plaque commemorating Wallace and Henry Walter Bates on the right hand side of the main entrance to the Leicestershire Museum & Art Gallery in New Walk, Leicester; and a plaque on a house which Wallace called “Pen-y-Bryn” (subsequently numbered 44) in St Peter's Road, Croydon, London where he lived between 9 January and 11 October 1880. There is also there is a medallion of Wallace showing a side view of his head, in Westminster Abbey in the North Aisle of the Choir, between those of Charles Darwin and Sir Isaac Newton. This was commissioned by the Wallace Memorial Committee and unveiled on 1st November 1915.
For details about other memorials to Wallace see http://www.wku.edu/%7Esmithch/wallace/just.htm
If anyone knows of any monuments which I have missed then please let me know!
George Beccaloni (The Natural History Museum, London)
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