THE Usk-born scientist credited with discovering natural selection was immortalised with a statue at London’s National History Museum on Thursday.

The life-size bronze statue, unveiled by Sir David Attenborough and the comedian Bill Bailey, shows avid collector Alfred Russel Wallace as a young man in his thirties, out in the field with his insect collecting equipment, in the moment when he first saw the magnificent golden birdwing butterfly. Wallace’s own description of capturing the first male of this butterfly in the rainforest of Bacan Island has become legendary. He was so excited by it he had a headache for the rest of the day.

The statue was made by sculpture Anthony Smith and presented to the museum on the 100th anniversary of the forgotten scientist’s death by the A R Wallace Memorial Fund, of which Mr Bailey is patron. It is part of the museum’s 'Wallace 100 year-celebrating the naturalist’s life and work' and will stand outside the new Darwin Centre 2 building, where many of Wallace’s specimens are exhibited.

Plans were originally made to commemorate the remarkable life of the Llanbadoc-born scientist after his death in November 1913, but the outbreak of the First World War meant these were abandoned.

Mr Wallace was born at Kensington House, Llanbadoc, in 1823 and is credited with co-discovering the process of evolution by natural selection with Charles Darwin in 1858.

He carried out pioneering work in south-east Asia from 1854 to 1862 and among his discoveries was the Wallace Line – where species from either side of the line are of two distinct origins.

From this period, he collected more than 120,000 specimens of insects, birds and other animals, including more than 5,000 that were new to science – the bulk of these are cared for by the Natural History Museum.

At the time of his death, Mr Wallace was arguably the world’s most famous scientist. But, since then his intellectual legacy has been overshadowed by that of Charles Darwin.

Dr George Beccaloni, the museum’s entomologist and founder and chairman of the Wallace Memorial Fund, said: “Wallace was a world-leading scientist and thinker, and fundamentally contributed to our understanding of life on Earth. While history may have almost forgotten him, I am pleased that he was finally honoured on this important anniversary. It is very positive to see him recognised as being the co-discoverer, with Charles Darwin, of one of the most important scientific theories of all time- evolution by natural selection.”

"We have tens of thousands of Wallace's specimens, many of which were new to science at the time, as well as his field notebooks and letters here in the collections of the Museum. They tell the story of a self-taught, self-financed naturalist whose passion for nature took him on a quest to attempt to discover the process driving the evolution of life on Earth-the origin of species. By the time of his death Wallace was a world-famous scientist and now, with this statue at the Museum, he will be more difficult to forget a second time."