Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), British naturalist, in middle age. Wallace organised expeditions to the Amazon and Malaysia and was the first European to see orang-utans in the wild. Wallace collected many specimens and founded the study of the geographical distribution of animals (biogeography). He formulated (independently of Charles Darwin) the theory of natural selection as a mechanism for the origin of species. He and Darwin presented their results in a joint paper in 1858 before the Linnean Society of London. Photographed by Florence Chant, based in Parkstone, Dorset.