Notable Biologists Posters and Prints, “W...-X...-Y...-Z...-”
for the science classroom, home schoolers, science education scholars.

Alfred Russel Wallace
b. 1-8-1823; Wales
d. 11-7-1913; England

Alfred Russel Wallace, who explored and did extensive field work in the Amazon and Malay Archipelago, is best remembered for proposing a natural selection evolutionary theory before Charles Darwin. Wallace's ideas include biogeography, the study of where organisms live and their population size, and why a certain organism is or is not found in a certain geographical area.

Wallace, one of the first to raise concerns over the environmental impact of human activity and critical of the social and economic systems of 19th century England, was influenced by Thomas Malthus.

Maurice Wilkins
b. 12-15-1916; New Zealand
d. 10-5-2004; England

Maurice Wilkins was a molecular biologist and 1962 Nobel Laureate for Physiology or Medicine, with Francis Crick and James Watson, “for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material.”

• The Third Man of the Double Helix: The Autobiography of Maurice Wilkins

Edward O. Wilson
b. 6-10-1929; Birmingham, AL

Biologist, naturalist, conservationist, author and professor, E. O. Wilson, is a two time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. His specialty is myrmecology, the study of ants; he originally chose to study insects because he lost the sight in one eye as a child and observing at a distance was difficult, however a shortage of pins during WWII caused him to switch to ants that could be stored in a vial. Adaptation?

Alexandre Yersin
b. 9-22-1868; Switzerland
d. 3-1-1943; Vietnam

Yersin, a physician and bacteriologist, was the co-discoverer, with Kitasato Shibasaburo, of the bacillus responsible for the bubonic plague.

• Plague by Wendy Orent