The Hume Centre for Ecology and Wildlife Biology (HCEWB), a research institute in Wayanad, has launched year-long programmes as part of the bicentenary celebrations of Alfred Russel Wallace who conceived the Theory of Natural Selection.
Inaugurating the programme, George Beccaloni, evolutionary biologist and science historian who worked at the Natural History Museum in London, said the seminal contributions of Wallace to biology rivalled those of his friend and colleague Charles Darwin, though he is far less known.
The British naturalist made enduring scholarly contributions to subjects as diverse as glaciology, land reform, anthropology, ethnography, epidemiology, and astrobiology, Dr. Beccaloni said.
His pioneering work on what would become evolutionary biogeography (the science that seeks to explain the geographical distribution of organisms) led to him becoming recognised as that subject’s ‘father’. Beyond this, Wallace is regarded as the pre-eminent collector and field biologist of tropical regions of the 19th century, and his book The Malay Archipelago is one of the most celebrated travel writings of that century and has never been out of print, Dr. Beccaloni said.
Wallace strongly believed in the rights of the ordinary person, was a socialist, and a proponent of land nationalisation, he said. A materialist until his 40s, he gradually developed a belief in naturalistic, evolutionary spiritualism, he added.
Prof. E Kunhikrishnan (former head, department of zoology, University College, Thiruvananthapuram) handled a session on ‘Scientific legacy of Alfred Russel Wallace’.
Prof. Kunhikrishnan took participants through the Amazon and Malayan voyages of Wallace. A ‘natural history exploration walk’ along with Prof. Kunhikrishnan and C.K. Vishnudas, an ornithologist and director, HCEWB, was organised as a part of the programme. Students and the public attended the programme.
Events such as science talks on evolution, biogeography, anthropology, essay competition and quiz for students, and natural history exploration walks will be organised in the coming days, the organisers said.
