So, whose theory of evolution is it?

Richard Collins looks at Darwin’s forgotten precursors

DARWIN mania will soon be upon us; the bicentenary of the great man’s birth occurs next February. Another Darwinian milestone was reached this month: on July 1, 150 years ago, papers by Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace were read at a meeting of the Linnaean Society in London.

The theory of evolution, which would change for ever our view of the natural world and our place in it, had been born.