Portside

In the midst of this gorgeous but very harsh environment, Wallace was able to keep a clear head, think deeply about what it all meant, put it down on paper and send it to the most prominent biologist of the time, Charles Darwin.

The myth: Darwin's friends cooked up a scheme to rob the working-class Wallace of his priority and instead put their friend Darwin first. The fact: every substantive claim in the popular narrative about Wallace turns out to be incorrect. As Wallace himself wrote: "this vast, this totally unprecedented change in public opinion has been the result of the work of one man, and was brought about in the short space of twenty years!"