George Gaylord Simpson | |
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 Simpson in 1965 | |
| Born | (1902-06-16)June 16, 1902 |
| Died | October 6, 1984(1984-10-06) (aged 82) |
| Alma mater |
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| Known for | Modern synthesis;quantum evolution |
| Awards |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Paleontology |
| Institutions | Columbia University |
| Doctoral advisor | Richard Swann Lull[1] |
George Gaylord Simpson (June 16, 1902 – October 6, 1984) was an Americanpaleontologist.[2][3] Simpson was perhaps the most influential paleontologist of the twentieth century, and a major participant in themodern synthesis, contributingTempo and Mode in Evolution (1944),The Meaning of Evolution (1949) andThe Major Features of Evolution (1953). He was an expert onextinctmammals and their intercontinental migrations.[4] Simpson was extraordinarily knowledgeable aboutMesozoic fossil mammals and fossil mammals of North and South America. He anticipated such concepts aspunctuated equilibrium (inTempo and Mode) and dispelled the myth that theevolution of the horse was a linear process culminating in the modernEquus caballus. He coined the wordhypodigm in 1940, and published extensively on thetaxonomy of fossil and extant mammals.[5] Simpson was influentially, and incorrectly, opposed toAlfred Wegener's theory ofcontinental drift,[6] but accepted thetheory of plate tectonics (and continental drift) when the evidence became conclusive.
He was Professor ofZoology atColumbia University, andCurator of the Department ofGeology and Paleontology at theAmerican Museum of Natural History from 1945 to 1959. He was Curator of theMuseum of Comparative Zoology atHarvard University from 1959 to 1970, and a Professor ofGeosciences at theUniversity of Arizona from 1968 until his retirement in 1982.
Simpson was elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1936 and the United StatesNational Academy of Sciences in 1941.[7][8] In 1943 Simpson was awarded theMary Clark Thompson Medal from theNational Academy of Sciences.[9] For his work,Tempo and mode in evolution, he was awarded the academy'sDaniel Giraud Elliot Medal in 1944.[10] He was elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1948.[11] He was awarded theLinnean Society of London's prestigiousDarwin-Wallace Medal in 1958. Simpson also received theRoyal Society'sDarwin 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 theAmerican Academy of Achievement.[12]
At theUniversity of Arizona,Tucson, theGould-Simpson Building was named in honor of Simpson and Minnesota geologist and polar explorerLawrence M. Gould, who, like Simpson, also accepted an appointment as Professor of Geosciences at the University of Arizona after his formal retirement.[13] Simpson was noted for his work in the fields ofpaleobiogeography andanimal evolution.
In the 1960s, Simpson "rubbished the then-nascent science ofexobiology, which concerneditself with life on places other than Earth, as a science without a subject".[14]
He was raised as a Christian but in his early teens became anagnostic, nontheist, and philosophical naturalist.[15]
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.
