Welcome to the home page of the Natural History Museum, London's Wallace Correspondence Project (WPC). This project aims to locate, digitize, transcribe and interpret all surviving letters to and from the great 19th century naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913). Wallace has many claims to fame, including being the co-discoverer with Charles Darwin in 1858 of the process of evolution by natural selection. For more information about his life and work CLICK HERE.
Electronic scans of Wallace's letters will be made available on this website via the project's innovative database soon after we obtain them. We believe that it is better that they are made accessible to users at the earliest possible opportunity, rather than having to wait for further work (such as transcription) to be done first. Over time the letters will be transcribed by volunteers and project staff, so our database will become progressively richer and more complete.
The Letters
There are estimated to be 5,000 surviving letters to and from Wallace, which are held in approximately one hundred institutions or private collections worldwide. Over half of them are in the collections of the Natural History Museum (c. 1200) and the British Library (c. 1600) combined. Smaller collections are present in other libraries in Britain and the United States of America, and there are a scattering of letters in private collections and institutions throughout the Western world. If you know of any letters which you think we might not have records of (e.g. letters in private collections) then we would be very grateful if you could let us know about them - please CLICK HERE to contact us.
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NOTA DESTE BLOGGER:
Finalmente parece que a História da Ciência reconhece o valor de Alfred Russel Wallace.
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