when is Alfred Russel Wallace's 200th birthday?

From Tom Wright in the WSJ, the story of Wallace fans going to bat for their man...

Mr. Wallace, a naturalist who spent many years collecting bird and insect specimens in the jungles of Indonesia, was famed in the Victorian era as the co-discoverer with Mr. Darwin of evolution by natural selection. But his reputation languished in the mid-20th century as scholars focused their attention on Mr. Darwin. More recently, several books have attempted to resuscitate Mr. Wallace's name, and most mainstream scientists now regard him as the co-founder of modern evolutionary theory.

Hardcore Wallace backers say that isn't good enough. In a new book, "The Darwin Conspiracy: Origins of a Scientific Crime," Roy Davies, a former producer of science programs for the BBC, accuses Mr. Darwin of stealing ideas about evolution from Mr. Wallace -- who was corresponding with him from Indonesia -- and passing them off as his own....

David Hallmark, a British lawyer who has retraced Mr. Wallace's travels in Southeast Asia, wants to prove Mr. Darwin was an academic cheat. He has hired a specialist in plagiarism software -- the kind used to catch deceitful college students -- to compare Mr. Darwin's and Mr. Wallace's extensive published papers and letters. He plans to submit the findings to a European plagiarism conference early in 2009.

Mr. Hallmark, like many of Mr. Wallace's most ardent supporters, revels in provoking angry reactions from the mainstream scientific community, where Mr. Darwin is revered....

The long-running dispute over who influenced whom dates back to the mid-1850s, when Mr. Wallace began corresponding with Mr. Darwin. In 1858, Mr. Wallace wrote a crucial letter from the Indonesian island of Ternate to Mr. Darwin in England, outlining his theory of evolution. Mr. Wallace concluded that environmental stress explained why species evolved over time and some died out...

Most scientists believe this was essentially the same theory that Mr. Darwin had been ruminating on for 20 years but never got around to publishing as he continued to collect evidence. Mr. Wallace's letter prodded Mr. Darwin to rush out his famous book the following year -- in part to avoid being scooped by Mr. Wallace....