SLOTTEN, Ross A. 1954-

PERSONAL: Born May 30, 1954, in Chicago, IL; son of Richard (a grocer) and Lillian (a homemaker) Slotten; partner of Kevin Murphy (a physician), since 1983. Education: Stanford University, B.A. (classics) and B.S. (biology), 1976; Northwestern University, M.D., 1981; University of Illinois, Chicago, M.P.H., 1994.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—Klein, Slotten & French Medical Associates, 711 West North Ave., Suite 209, Chicago, IL 60610. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Physician in private practice, Chicago, IL, 1984—; Northwestern University School of Medicine, Evanston, IL, member of faculty; St. Joseph Hospital, Chicago, associate attending physician, beginning 1984, cofounder of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) unit, adviser for Human Immune Deficiency Virus (HIV) and aging study, and member of ad hoc AIDS task force. Served on the boards of organizations, including Bonaventure House (homeless shelter for AIDS patients); Horizon Hospice, Chicago, adviser.

MEMBER: International AIDS Society, American Medical Association, American Academy of Family Physicians.

WRITINGS:

The Heretic in Darwin's Court: The Life of Alfred Russel Wallace (biography), Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Ross A. Slotten is a Chicago, Illinois, physician who specializes in the treatment and study of Human Immune Deficiency Virus (HIV). Slotten has been involved in the clinical trials of many HIV medications and served on the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) task force at Chicago's St. Joseph Hospital, where he cofounded the AIDS unit. For nine years he served on the board of directors of Bonaventure House, a refuge for homeless AIDS patients. Within Slotten's family medicine practice, he has taken responsibility for more than one thousand patients with HIV.

Slotten has written a biography of the British naturalist whose work threatened to scoop nineteenth-century English naturalist Charles Darwin's own, and which prompted Darwin to publish his now-classic On the Origin of the Species. In The Heretic in Darwin's Court: The Life of Alfred Russel Wallace, Slotten notes that the little-known Wallace (1823-1913) was a self-educated scientist, born of the working class, who in 1858 sent Darwin a manuscript outlining his own concept of natural selection and its importance in the creation of new species. Darwin, who had been working on his theory for more than twenty years, had yet to publish on the topic. Oren Solomon Harman noted in American Scientist that "through a 'gentlemanly arrangement' brokered by Darwin's powerful scientific friends Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker, Wallace's offering to Darwin was presented at, and published by, the Linnean Society in July 1858, along with an abstract of an unpublished paper Darwin had written in 1844 and an abstract of an 1857 letter from Darwin to Asa Gray, an American botanist. By presenting this material chronologically, Lyell and Hooker implied that Wallace was merely supporting Darwin's earlier discoveries, and Darwin's priority was secured." Although the two men shared ideas for decades, it was Darwin who received credit for their mutual theories on evolution.

Wallace later changed his thinking, contending that the origins of morality and man's intellectual nature are based in spirituality, but his theories were given no weight in comparison with those of Darwin, whose upper-class background gave him more validity in scientific circles. Wallace's new beliefs also led him to participate in seances and contact with the dead through mediums, all of which greatly embarrassed Darwin and other scientific naturalists. But Wallace was a great contributor to many disciplines. By his return in 1862 from an eight-year tropical expedition, he had collected 125,660 specimens of mammals, reptiles, birds, shells, butterflies and moths, and beetles and other insects.

Slotten provides a broad analysis of Wallace's life, noting the naturalist's passion for social justice and land reform and his opposition to the smallpox vaccine. A Publishers Weekly contributor felt that "Slotten's enjoyable exposition provides insight into the scientific process and the role of class structure in Victorian England."

Harman wrote that Slotten "has an amateur's enthusiasm for his subject, which lends his account a kind of intimacy." Slotten told Library Journal contributor Andrew Richard Albanese that he discovered Wallace's work while preparing for a trip to Indonesia. A guidebook recommended Wallace's Malay Archipelago as a travel-literature classic. Upon returning to the United States, Slotten began his own research of the man who had lived in Darwin's shadow.

Harman concluded by saying that Slotten has given Wallace "his most complete and colorful viewing, as a leading evolutionary theorist, social philosopher, hopeless dreamer, anthropologist and spiritualist, friend, explorer, and tireless seeker of justice and of truth. This is a good, old-fashioned, beautifully written biography, devoid of pretension and with both a wonderful eye for detail and an impressive command of history and fact. Those unfamiliar with Wallace's life will greatly enjoy Slotten's fine book. When all is said and done, there's no substitute for a well-told story."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Scientist, September-October, 2004, Oren Solomon Harman, review of The Heretic in Darwin's Court: The Life of Alfred Russel Wallace, p. 470.

Booklist, July, 2004, Bryce Christensen, review of The Heretic in Darwin's Court, p. 1807.

Library Journal, June 15, 2004, Gloria Maxwell, review of The Heretic in Darwin's Court, p. 94; June 15, 2004, Andrew Richard Albanese, interview with Slotten.

Natural History, September, 2004, Menno Schilthuizen, review of The Heretic in Darwin's Court, p. 58.

New Scientist, July 31, 2004, Douglas Palmer, review of The Heretic in Darwin's Court, p. 53.

Publishers Weekly, April 26, 2004, review of The Heretic in Darwin's Court, p. 48.