Statue to Alfred Russel Wallace (a Hertford schoolboy) unveiled

Hertford

Alfred Russel Wallace

To celebrate the centenary of Alfred Russel Wallace's death a statute has been unveiled at the Natural History Museum and in the run up to this event there has been a lot of interest in the man - as shown by the number of visits to the page on Wallace on my web site and the item on him on this Newsletter.

There has been many pages of information appearing about him in the last few days such as:

• Alfred Russel Wallace (Natural History Museum)
• Alfred Russel Wallace - A very rare specimen (New Scientist)
• Evolution pioneer honoured by statue (BBC News)
• Attenborough: The forgotten story of Alfred Russel Wallace (BBC Science)

Sir David Attenborough unveiling statue

Education

Virtually all the coverage overlooks the fact that if it had not been for his education at Hertford Grammar School he might never have become a scientist. But there was on notable exception. The Hertford Mercury web site has a well illustrated news item Hertford-born Alfred Russel Wallace: His life and times about the special exhibition at the Hertford Museum (Tuesdays to Saturdays until 22nd February 2014)

At the Wallace Exhibition, Hertford Museum

Alfred Russel Wallace's connection with Hertford

A. R. Wallace (1823-1913) is best known because his theory of evolution by natural selection was drafted before Charles Darwin's had finished writing On the Origin of Species. Because of my interest in evolution (see posts on my other blog, Trapped by the Box) I was interested to see that Wallace's works are now available online.

However his mother came from an established Hertford family (her grandfather William Greenell was twice mayor of Hertford), and Alfred was educated at Hertford Grammar School.

While Alfred's book My Life is well known because of his scientific work it is also a very useful source about Hertford in the 1830s with vivid descriptions of the town and what is was like to be a pupil in a small school such as  Hertford Grammar School. For this reason I have written a review on this aspect of the book.