Darwin Publishes Natural Selection: A Theory Transforms Biology

Alfred Russel Wallace mailed a manuscript to Charles Darwin from the Malay Archipelago in early 1858, describing a theory of evolution by natural selection so strikingly similar to Darwin's own unpublished work that Darwin wrote to his friend Charles Lyell: "All my originality, whatever it may amount to, will be smashed." Darwin had been developing his theory since the 1830s Beagle voyage but had spent two decades accumulating evidence rather than publishing, paralyzed by the implications of his ideas and their certain collision with religious orthodoxy. Wallace, thirteen years Darwin's junior and working alone in what is now Indonesia, had arrived at natural selection independently during a bout of malarial fever on the island of Ternate. His paper, "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type," argued that organisms better adapted to their environment survive and reproduce at higher rates, gradually transforming species over time. The logic was essentially identical to Darwin's. Lyell and botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker arranged a joint presentation of papers by both Darwin and Wallace to the Linnean Society of London on July 1, 1858. Neither man was present: Darwin was mourning the death of his infant son from scarlet fever, and Wallace was still in Southeast Asia. The presentation generated surprisingly little immediate reaction. The Linnean Society's president remarked at year's end that 1858 had not been distinguished by any revolutionary discoveries. Darwin, jolted into action by Wallace's paper, compressed his planned multi-volume treatise into a single work. On the Origin of Species was published on November 24, 1859, and its first printing of 1,250 copies sold out on the first day. Wallace, who could have become a bitter rival, instead became one of Darwin's strongest advocates and publicly credited Darwin with priority. The two maintained a respectful correspondence for decades.