also to the new technology they had at their disposal.
Good timing
Important discoveries are often made simultaneously by different people, suggesting that the field is ripe for a new idea. Perhaps the pieces of a new theory are available in different scientific publications, just waiting for someone to put them together. Or perhaps new observations seem to independently point toward a unifying principle. The theory of evolution by natural selection may have been one of these ideas. Although Charles Darwin's notes on evolution extend back to the late 1830s, Alfred Russell Wallace developed some of the same key ideas independently. Both drew on relatively recent advances in geology and economics, applying ideas from other fields to develop a new theory of their own. In the end, they agreed to share credit for the idea and jointly presented papers on evolution to London's Royal Society. Darwin and Wallace were certainly great thinkers of their own accord, but good timing may have contributed to their conceptual breakthrough as well.