who discovered natural selection

Natural selection was independently discovered by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, but Darwin is most strongly associated with developing and widely presenting the idea.

Core answer

• Charles Darwin began formulating the idea of evolution by natural selection in the late 1830s and first fully published it in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species.

• Alfred Russel Wallace independently conceived the same principle; his 1858 paper on natural selection was presented jointly with Darwin’s earlier work at the Linnean Society.

• For this reason, historians usually say Darwin and Wallace co-discovered natural selection, with Darwin receiving primary credit for assembling extensive evidence and popularizing the theory.

A bit of background

• Darwin’s long reflections on species variation, especially after his voyage on HMS Beagle, led him by 1838 to the insight that more offspring are produced than can survive, and that those with advantageous traits are more likely to leave descendants.

• Wallace, working in South America and Southeast Asia, reached similar conclusions while studying species distribution; his 1858 essay startled Darwin because it nearly matched Darwin’s own theory.

Why Darwin is most famous

• Darwin compiled a vast body of evidence and arguments for natural selection in On the Origin of Species , which became the foundational text of modern evolutionary biology.

• Later editions of Darwin’s work even acknowledged earlier hints of the idea by others, but those earlier authors neither developed the concept nor supported it with systematic evidence, so they are not credited as discoverers in the modern sense.

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