George Gaylord Simpson

Born June 16, 1902, in Chicago. American paleontologist. Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1943) and the National Academy of Sciences (1941). Attended the University of Colorado in 1918 and 1919 and from 1920 to 1922. Doctor of philosophy (1926) and Doctor of sciences (1946).

Simpson worked at the American Museum of Natural History in New York from 1927 to 1959, heading the geology and paleontology department from 1944 to 1958. He was a professor of zoology at Columbia University in New York from 1945 to 1959. He worked at the Museum of Comparative Zoology from 1959 to 1970 and was simultaneously a professor of geology and biology at Harvard University. Simpson was also a professor of geology at the University of Arizona from 1967 to 1970; in 1970 he became a professor of geosciences at the university.

Simpson contributed to the development of the modern synthetic theory of evolution with studies linking paleontological and genetic data. He wrote on the rates and forms of evolution and coined the terms “megaevolution,” “bradytely,” “horote-ly,” “tachytely,” and “quantum evolution.”

Simpson is a foreign member of the Royal Society of London (1958).