Science textbooks are often criticized for distorting how science is actually done. The scant attention to the life and work of scientists is one of many ways that science textbooks convey mistaken notions about what being a scientist and doing science is like. When textbooks sometimes note an individual scientist’s contribution to our current understanding of the natural world, they usually focus only on the most notable historical figure and ignore the contribution of others. This wrongly conveys that science is a solitary undertaking, and that advancements in our understanding of the natural world are due to single individuals. This misconception is evident in the way biology textbooks often address the important work of Charles Darwin, and ignore or quickly pass over the work of Alfred Russel Wallace, who independently proposed a theory of natural selection.

Explore the life of Alfred Russel Wallace.