You've heard of Charles Darwin, right? The celebrated¹ scientist who proposed a theory of evolution. You might have just about heard of Alfred Russel Wallace, who co-authored, with Darwin, the revolutionary work On the Origin of Species, published in 1859. But what about Patrick Matthew? ‘Patrick who?’ you might ask. Well, Darwin and Wallace got the fame but Matthew did the legwork too.

 

This British horticulturalist actually thought about evolution first, as Dr Mike Weale, geneticist at King’s College London, explains. He says: "Matthew published a brief outline of the idea of species being able to change into other species through natural selection. And he did that 27 years before Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. And they recognized that he did so but other people since have simplified the story and tended to concentrate just on Darwin."

 

So Patrick Matthew's relative obscurity may simply be down to us – the general public – wanting to simplify things. But Dr Patricia Fara, senior tutor at Clare College Cambridge, points out that Darwin's work might have received more attention because he had powerful friends.

 

"He brought his allies on board", she says. The academic explains that "although he was publishing from his stronghold down in Kent he had the most famous, most prominent members of the scientific society in Victorian times, who were pushing on his behalf. Having a scientific theory being accepted is not just a matter of whether the theory’s right."

 

Maybe it is time for us to remember Patrick Matthew, a pioneer of the story of survival through adaptation that is at the heart of evolution.

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