George Frederick Matthew

George Frederick Matthew ( born August 12, 1837 in Saint John (New Brunswick ), † April 14, 1923 in Hastings -on-Hudson, New York) was a Canadian geologist and paleontologist.

Matthew was urban or state employee ( from 1893 until his retirement in 1915 Customs Overseer ) in Saint John (then a busy port ) and in paleontology and geology autodidact. His interest in geology woke possibly by Abraham Pineo Gesner collection of. In other amateur geologists, he founded the stone hammer Club. He first published especially on fossils in the area of his home Saint John, trace fossils, among others. He also came into contact with the leading Canadian geologists of his time, John William Dawson. He became the first curator of the Natural History Society founded in 1862 in New Brunswick, which he was president from 1889 to 1895. The company also published a magazine, published in Matthew. 1864 to 1901 he also worked part-time for the Geological Survey of Canada and charted for this in the area of ​​New Brunswick, where he worked with Woart Loring Bailey, a fellow professor at the University of New Brunswick. He was also a specialist in fossils of Cambrian trilobites in particular for the Survey. In 1890, he was the first to describe Precambrian stromatolites, which occurred in the area of Saint John.

In 1864 he was with Bailey and Fred Hartt, another amateur geologists, near St. John the oldest Cambrian trilobite locality in North America.

He was an honorary doctorate from Laval University and the University of New Brunswick. In 1917 he received the Murchison Medal of the Geological Society of London.

Matthew described over 350 species of fossil animals and plants for the first time. The Mount Matthew in northern New Brunswick is named after him.

His son, William Diller Matthew, was a well-known vertebrate paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.