George Gaylord Simpson#Books

{{Infobox scientist

|name = George Gaylord Simpson

|honorific_suffix = {{post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|ForMemRS}}

|image = George Gaylord Simpson-en.jpg

|caption = Simpson in 1965

|birth_date = {{birth date|1902|6|16|mf=yes}}

|birth_place = Chicago, Illinois

|death_date = {{death date and age|1984|10|6|1902|6|16|mf=yes}}

|death_place = Tucson, Arizona

|residence =

|citizenship =

|nationality = American

|ethnicity =

|field = Paleontology

|work_institutions = Columbia University

|alma_mater = {{ublist|University of Colorado|Yale University, B.A., Ph.D.}}

|doctoral_advisor = Richard Swann Lull

|doctoral_students =

|known_for = Modern synthesis; quantum evolution

|author_abbrev_bot =

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|influences =

|influenced =

|prizes = {{ublist|Mary Clark Thompson Medal (1943)|Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal (1944)|Hayden Memorial Geological Award (1950)|Penrose Medal (1952)|Darwin-Wallace Medal (1958)|Darwin Medal (1962)|Linnean Medal (1962)|National Medal of Science (1965)|Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal (1965)|Paleontological Society Medal (1973)|Foreign Member of the Royal Society{{Cite journal | last1 = Whittington | first1 = H. B. | doi = 10.1098/rsbm.1986.0017 | title = George Gaylord Simpson. 16 June 1902-6 October 1984 | journal = Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society | volume = 32 | pages = 525–39 | year = 1986 | pmid = 11621258| jstor = 770122| s2cid = 31570609 }}}}

|religion =

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}}

George Gaylord Simpson (June 16, 1902 – October 6, 1984) was an American paleontologist. Simpson was perhaps the most influential paleontologist of the twentieth century, and a major participant in the modern synthesis, contributing Tempo and Mode in Evolution (1944), The Meaning of Evolution (1949) and The Major Features of Evolution (1953). He was an expert on extinct mammals and their intercontinental migrations.Simpson G.G. 1940. Mammals and land bridges. Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 30: 137{{ndash}}163. See Charles H. Smith's website for full text: [http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/biogeog/SIMP940B.htm] Simpson was extraordinarily knowledgeable about Mesozoic fossil mammals and fossil mammals of North and South America. He anticipated such concepts as punctuated equilibrium (in Tempo and Mode) and dispelled the myth that the evolution of the horse was a linear process culminating in the modern Equus caballus. He coined the word hypodigm in 1940, and published extensively on the taxonomy of fossil and extant mammals.{{Cite journal | last1 = Simpson | first1 = G. G. | author-link = George Gaylord Simpson| title = Types in modern taxonomy | doi = 10.2475/ajs.238.6.413 | journal = American Journal of Science | volume = 238 | issue = 6 | pages = 413–426 | year = 1940 | bibcode = 1940AmJS..238..413S }} p. 418. Simpson was influentially, and incorrectly, opposed to Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift,Simpson G.G. 1953. Evolution and geography: an essay on historical biogeography with special reference to mammals. Oregon State System of Higher Education: Eugene, Oregon. but accepted the theory of plate tectonics (and continental drift) when the evidence became conclusive.

He was Professor of Zoology at Columbia University, and Curator of the Department of Geology and Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History from 1945 to 1959. He was Curator of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University from 1959 to 1970, and a Professor of Geosciences at the University of Arizona from 1968 until his retirement in 1982.

Awards and honors

Simpson was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1936 and the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1941.{{Cite web |title=APS Member History |url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=George+G.+Simpson&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=&year-max=&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced |access-date=2023-05-31 |website=search.amphilsoc.org}}{{Cite web |title=George G. Simpson |url=http://www.nasonline.org/member-directory/deceased-members/20001972.html |access-date=2023-05-31 |website=www.nasonline.org}} In 1943 Simpson was awarded the Mary Clark Thompson Medal from the National Academy of Sciences.{{cite web|title=Mary Clark Thompson Medal |url=http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AWARDS_thompson |publisher=National Academy of Sciences |access-date=February 15, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101229195631/http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AWARDS_thompson |archive-date=December 29, 2010 }} For his work, Tempo and mode in evolution, he was awarded the academy's Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal in 1944.{{cite web|title=Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal |url=http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AWARDS_elliot |publisher=National Academy of Sciences |access-date=February 15, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120801121352/http://nas.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AWARDS_elliot |archive-date=August 1, 2012 }} He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1948.{{Cite web |date=2023-02-09 |title=George Gaylord Simpson |url=https://www.amacad.org/person/george-gaylord-simpson |access-date=2023-05-31 |website=American Academy of Arts & Sciences |language=en}} He was awarded the Linnean Society of London's prestigious Darwin-Wallace Medal in 1958. Simpson also received the Royal Society's Darwin Medal 'In recognition of his distinguished contributions to general evolutionary theory, based on a profound study of palaeontology, particularly of vertebrates,' in 1962. In 1966, Simpson received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.{{cite web|title= Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement |website=www.achievement.org|publisher=American Academy of Achievement|url=https://achievement.org/our-history/golden-plate-awards/#science-exploration}}

At the University of Arizona, Tucson, the Gould-Simpson Building was named in honor of Simpson and Minnesota geologist and polar explorer Lawrence M. Gould, who, like Simpson, also accepted an appointment as Professor of Geosciences at the University of Arizona after his formal retirement.[http://iiewww.ccit.arizona.edu/uamap/staticLarge/77.html Gould-Simpson Building, Univ. of Arizona] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090615005801/http://iiewww.ccit.arizona.edu/uamap/staticLarge/77.html |date=June 15, 2009 }} Simpson was noted for his work in the fields of paleobiogeography and animal evolution.

Views

In the 1960s, Simpson "rubbished the then-nascent science of exobiology, which concerned

itself with life on places other than Earth, as a science without a subject".{{Cite journal | author = Anon| doi = 10.1038/440582a | title = Astrobiology at ten | journal = Nature | volume = 440 | issue = 7084 | page = 582| year = 2006 | pmid = 16572129|bibcode = 2006Natur.440Q.582. | doi-access = free }}

He was raised as a Christian but in his early teens became an agnostic, nontheist, and philosophical naturalist.{{cite book|title=Simple Curiosity: Letters from Gaylord Simpson to His Family, 1921-1970|url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_oTFEYuvKCWIC|year=1987|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=9780520057920|page=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_oTFEYuvKCWIC/page/n324 16]|editor=Léo F. Laporte|quote=By his early teens, Simpson had given up being a Christian, although he had not formally declared himself an atheist. At college he began the gradual development of what might best be called positivistic agnosticism: a belief that the world could be known and explained by ordinary empirical observation without recourse to supernatural forces. Ultimate causation, he considered unknowable.}}

Books

Attending marvels (1931)
[https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.19161 Quantitative Zoology] (1939)
Tempo and Mode in Evolution (1944)
The Principles of Classification and A Classification of Mammals (1945)
[https://archive.org/details/B-001-013-835 The Meaning of Evolution] (1949, 1951)
Horses (1951)
Evolution and Geography (1953)
The Major Features of Evolution (1953)
Life: An Introduction to Biology (1957)
Quantitative Zoology (1960)
Principles of Animal Taxonomy (1961)
This View of Life (1964)
The Geography of Evolution (1965)
Penguins (1976)
Concession to the Improbable (1978) (an autobiography)
Splendid Isolation (1980)
The Book of Darwin (1983)
Fossils and the History Of Life (1983)
The Dechronization of Sam Magruder (posthumously published novella, 1996)

References

External links

[http://people.ucsc.edu/~laporte/simpson/Index.html George Gaylord Simpson] — full and comprehensive biography by L. F. Laporte
[http://www.stephenjaygould.org/people/george_simpson.html George Gaylord Simpson] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090824120929/http://www.stephenjaygould.org/people/george_simpson.html |date=August 24, 2009 }} — biographical sketch from The Stephen Jay Gould Archive
[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/06/2/l_062_02.html George Gaylord Simpson] — a short biography from the PBS Evolution website
[http://www.amphilsoc.org/collections/search?creator=simpson;smode=advanced;f1-subject=Simpson,%20George%20Gaylord,%201902-1984 George Gaylord Simpson Papers, American Philosophical Society.]
[https://openlibrary.org/a/OL122017A/George_Gaylord_Simpson George Gaylord Simpson] — Open Library

Category:1902 births

Category:1984 deaths

Category:Columbia University faculty

Category:American critics of creationism

Category:Critics of cryptozoology

Category:Critics of Lamarckism

Category:Harvard University staff

Category:University of Arizona faculty

Category:American former Christians

Category:American agnostics

Category:American paleontologists

Category:American mammalogists