Alfred R. Wallace (1823-1913): ciencia, política y moral en el “último de los victorianos”

Alfred Russel Wallace was a naturalist who gained a reputation through his travels and studies of the flora and fauna of the tropics, which in turn gave him the confidence to present his hypothesis on the evolutionary development of living organisms to the scientific community. In this way, he became a ‘co- discoverer’ of the theory of natural selection alongside Charles Darwin, which was presented to the Linnean Society of London in 1858 as a joint discovery. Despite this, Wallace maintained some significant differences with the author of On the Origin of Species regarding the scope of natural selection as it applied to the human species, and later even went so far as to advocate for a social and political future that would eliminate humanity’s most pressing needs and problems.