Alfred Russel Wallace, a self-taught scientist from relatively humble origins, became one of the most famed naturalists of the Victorian age. A contemporary of Charles Darwin, he shared in the discovery of natural selection--the key to the concept of evolution--and he made major contributions to natural history, geology, anthropology, climatology, biogeography, and many other fields. An intrepid collector whose expeditions to remote Amazonia and southeast Asia were the stuff of legend, he was also a humanitarian and an advocate for women’s rights and labor reforms—and he was a devotee of spiritualism. Join us for a talk by James T. Costa, whose new book, Radical by Nature: The Revolutionary Life of Alfred Russel Wallace, tells the compelling story of this complex and remarkable scientist who helped shape our understanding of the world we live in.

Dr. Costa is professor of biology and Executive Director of the Highlands Biological Station at Western Carolina University.  He is an evolutionary biologist, entomologist, and Darwin and Wallace scholar who has lectured widely in the United States and Europe.  He is the author of numerous scientific publications, magazine articles, and nine books, including Radical by Nature, Darwin and the Art of Botany, and an annotated edition of Darwin’s masterwork, On the Origin of Species.

We invite you to support the author by purchasing a copy of their book from Browseabout Books by clicking HERE. Call-in orders are accepted at (302) 226-2665 or you can stop by the store to purchase a copy. For store hours, please visit their website.

The library's “Science and Society - Making Sense of the World Around Us” lecture series is co-organized and moderated by Fred Dylla, Executive Director Emeritus of the American Institute of Physics and author of Scientific Journeys, Linda Dylla, former public information officer at the Jefferson Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy, and Colin Norman, the former News Editor at Science.

NOTE: this meeting is being conducted through Zoom. You MUST REGISTER to receive instructions for joining the meeting.

If you need assistance with registration or getting your Zoom invitation, please email us.

Basic written instructions for using Zoom may be found here and a brief video tutorial may be found here. Closed captioning is available for all our sessions. Information on enabling closed captioning in Zoom may be found here.