George Gaylord Simpson

George Gaylord Simpson ( born June 16, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, † October 6, 1984 in Tucson, Arizona) was an American zoologist, paleontologist and one of the architects of the synthetic theory of evolution. He was an expert on extinct mammals ( especially horses ) and its intercontinental hikes, as well as prehistoric penguins.

Simpson was one of the most influential paleontologist of the 20th century. He was a professor of zoology at Columbia University in New York and Curator of Geology and Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History from 1945 to 1959 and curator at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University.

Life

George Gaylord Simpson was born on June 16, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois. He and his two older sisters were strict Presbyterian upbringing. He spent his youth primarily in Denver, Colorado. Simpson studied at the University of Colorado from 1918 to 1922 and from 1922 to 1926, where he received his BA degree in 1926 and graduated from the Yale University in 1923 as a Ph. D.. His doctoral thesis, entitled "American Mesozoic Mammalia " treated American mammals in the Mesozoic. Simpson married in 1938 his second wife, Anne Roe, a statistician and a clinical psychologist.

In 1926 and 1927 he worked at the Natural History Museum in London and from 1927 to 1959 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He undertook several expeditions to America and Patagonia in order to identify fossils.

As a captain and later as a Major, he served from 1942 to 1944 in the U.S. Army. After the war he was employed as a professor of zoology at Columbia University from 1945 to 1959. From 1959 to 1970 he was curator at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. From 1967 to 1984 he was a professor of geosciences at the University of Arizona.

George Gaylord Simpson died on October 6, 1984 in Tucson, Arizona at the age of 82 years.

Honors

Simpson was a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1936 he was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society, with the John Frederick Lewis Award honored him in 1943 for his work The Beginnings of Vertebrate Paleontology in North America. In 1952 he received the Penrose Medal of the Geological Society of America.

In 1958 he was chosen as the " Foreign Member " of the Royal Society, in 1962, the Darwin Medal awarded him. Also in 1962 he was awarded the Linnean Medal of the Linnean Society of London; In 1966 he received the National Medal of Science. To him, the Romer -Simpson Medal was named in honor of an award in the field of vertebrate paleontology of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, whose honor he is a member (1969).

Simpson received an honorary doctorate from the University of Colorado, the University of New Mexico, the University of Chicago, Yale University, and York University.

Quotes

  • " Simpson made ​​a partner paleontology in evolutionary theory" Stephen Jay Gould
  • "Man is the product of a purposeless and natural process that did not have it in the sense "

Works

  • Attending Marvels: A Patagonian Journal, 1934
  • The Fort Union of the Crazy Mountain Field, Montana, and its mammalian faunas1937
  • Quantitative Zoology 1939 2003 ISBN 0-486-43275-0
  • Mammals and the Nature of Continents 1943
  • Tempo and Mode in Evolution 1944 1984 ISBN 0-231-05847-0 (German: time and mass flow forms of evolution, 1951)
  • Principles of Classification and a Classification of Mammals 1945
  • The Meaning of Evolution 1949 1967 ISBN 0-300-00229-7 (German: On the Trail of Life, 1957)
  • Horses: The Story of the Horse Family in the Modern World and Through Sixty Million Years of History 1951 ISBN 0-19-500104-4 (German: horse, 1977 ISBN 3-489-76832-9 )
  • Evolution and Geography 1953
  • The Major Features of Evolution 1953 ISBN 0-231-01821-5
  • Life of the Past: An Introduction to Paleontology (1953 ) ISBN 0-300-00951-8 (German: life of old, ISBN 3-432-01742-1, 1972 )
  • Life: An Introduction to Biology 1957 1969; Textbook ISBN 0-15-550716-8
  • Principles of Animal Taxonomy 1961 ISBN 0-231-02427-4
  • This View of Life 1964 ISBN 0-15-690070- X
  • The Geography of Evolution 1965
  • Attending marvels: A Patagonian journal 1965 ISBN 0809437260
  • This View of Life: The World of an Evolutionist 1966 ISBN 0 - 15-690070 -X
  • Biology and Man 1969 ISBN 0151123624 (German: Biology and Human, 1972 ISBN 3-518-06536- X)
  • Penguins: Past and Present, Here and There 1976 ISBN 0-300-03095-9
  • Concession to the Improbable 1978, ISBN 0-300-02143-7 autobiography
  • Splendid Isolation: The Curious History of South American Mammals 1980 ISBN 0-300-03094-0
  • Why and How: Some Problems and Methods in Historical Biology 1981 ISBN 0-08-025785-2
  • Book of Darwin in 1983 ISBN 0-671-43126-9
  • The Dechronization of Sam Magruder, science fiction novel ISBN 0-312-15514- X
  • Fossils and the History of Life 1984 ISBN 0-7167-1564-3 (engl.: Fossils, 1984 ISBN 3-922508-67-7 )
  • George Gaylord Simpson: Paleontologist and Evolutionist by Léo F. Laporte Biography ISBN 0-231-12065-6
List of Penrose Medal winners Romer-Simpson Medal Julian Huxley Bernhard Rensch G. Ledyard Stebbins Integrated Authority File
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