Darwin–Wallace Medal
medal awarded by the Linnean Society of London for "major advances in evolutionary biology"
The Darwin–Wallace Medal is a medal awarded by the Linnean Society of London for "major advances in evolutionary biology". Historically, the medals have been awarded every 50 years, beginning in 1908. That year marked 50 years after the joint presentation by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace of two scientific papers—On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection—to the Linnean Society of London on 1 July 1858. Fittingly, Wallace was one of the first recipients of the medal, in his case it was, exceptionally, in gold, rather than the silver version presented in the six other initial awards. However, in 2008 the Linnean Society announced that due to the continuing importance of evolutionary research, the medal will be awarded on an annual basis beginning in 2010.
“Darwin–Wallace Medal” enters the record as medal awarded by the Linnean Society of London for "major advances in evolutionary biology". Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Darwin, Wallace and Medal can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1166881. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1908, 1858, 2008 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “Darwin–Wallace Medal” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.