Patrick Matthew

Patrick Matthew was a Scottish grain merchant, fruit farmer, forester, and landowner, who contributed to the understanding of horticulture, silviculture, and agriculture in general, with a focus on maintaining the British navy and feeding new colonies. He published the basic concept of natural selection as a mechanism in evolutionary adaptation and speciation and species constancy or stasis in 1831 but did not further publicly develop his ideas until after Darwin and Wallace published their theories of evolution by natural selection in 1859. It has been suggested that Darwin and/or Wallace had encountered Matthew's earlier work, but there is no hard evidence of this. After the publication of On the Origin of Species, Matthew contacted Darwin, who in subsequent editions of the book acknowledged that the principle of natural selection had been anticipated by Matthew's brief statement, mostly contained in the appendices and addendum of his 1831 book On Naval Timber and Arboriculture.

20 October 1790

Born on the same birth day (20 October): Audun Kleive • Cancio Garcia • John Anderson (actor) • Martin Drewes • Rex Ingram (actor) • Robert Lochner • Robert Peters (writer) • Sam Mataora

Born in the same month (October 1790): Alphonse de Lamartine • Chauncey A. Goodrich • John Ross (Cherokee chief) • Robert Stirling