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Biographical Memoirs Volume 60 (1991) / Chapter Skim
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17. George Gaylord Simpson
Pages 330-353

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From page 331...
... Both books left researchers in a variety of fielcts pondering and often revising, conceptual bases ~ Although I had earlier written a memorial to George Gaylord Simpson for the Geological Society of America, I agreed to prepare a more intimate and more personal essay for the National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoirs. The more objective accounts of his life include the essay mentioned above (Memorial Series, Geological Society of America, 1985)
From page 332...
... AS I KNEW HIM When I first met George Simpson at the American Museum of Natural History in 1935, he was thirty-three years olc} ant} already well established as a scholar ant} scientist, clue in no small part to his two monumental works on Mesozoic mammals of the United States (his Ph.D. thesis at Yale)
From page 333...
... Martinis and serious scientific cliscussion clic! not blend well, but this probably did not matter to George, who felt at all times that informal discourse was not profitable for discussing ideas of any import.
From page 334...
... Yet in a contrary way, the same dogma had much to do with cleveloping his ideas regarding the nature of truth and reality the scientific philosophy that wouIc3 permeate his scientific work. As he wrote in his autobiography, his discovery of the "rather silly distinction between clogma and reality" was a starting point for intellectual growth.
From page 335...
... In 1938 George married Anne Roe, whom he hall known example, in the comedic cartoons he used to illustrate some of his biogeographic essays and in the incomparable, Attending Marvels: A Patagonian Journal (New York: MacMillan, 1934)
From page 336...
... They proceeded together through the mazes of academia, lived tranquil summers in their New Mexican summer place, macle many contributions to their own fields and working together jointly to the fields of biometrics, evolution, and behavior. This gentle little coda to the autobiographical notes George deposited} with the National Academy of Sciences in 1975 expresses something of their perfect harmony: "Now, at 4:30 P.M.
From page 337...
... his interest in primitive mammals to include early Cenozoic mammals of the western United States and South America. The Crazy Mountain Basin of Montana ant} the San Juan Basin of New Mexico with their broac!
From page 338...
... The carnivores were predominantly marsupials; the herbivores were placentals including some that had remarkable counterparts of northern-hemisphere mammals; and others that were strangely ctifferent, such as the great sloths and armadillos, grouped as edentates. Intrigued by the similarities and cli~erences of the evolutionary pathways of mammals of the north and south cluring this long time of isolation, Simpson undertook field and museum studies in South America parallel to those he had done on the early Tertiary of western North America.
From page 339...
... distributions proved particularly puzzling to paleontologists of the early 20th century, who were secure in the "knowledge" that continents were, and always had been, Axed in their positions. The few maverick proponents of continental drift followers of Alfrecl Wegener were generally dismissed as clreamers, and Simpson cast his own biogeographic explanations within a framework of continental fixity.
From page 340...
... Columbia University maintained close ties with the American Museum, and in 1945 Simpson became a professor there. Unlike most of his paleontological colleagues, he recognized the importance of genetics in evolutionary studies.
From page 341...
... classification, equilibrium and dis· · ~ equal ~ croup, and extinctions. As an alternative to gradualism, a part of many of Simpson's concepts, Eldridge and Gould suggested their hypothesis of "punctuated equilibria."5 The ensuing controversy proclucec} various hypotheses regarding selection in populations of organisms, with punctuated equilibria, in particular, developing far beyond its initial formulation.
From page 342...
... In the course of his empirical work in museums and the field, George became keenly aware that a hierarchical organization of organisms based on evolutionary relationships was necessary to the orderly study of evolution ant! biogeography.
From page 343...
... He was an avid and able field geologist and paleontologist. This time-consuming part of a paleontologist's life is the sine qua non of a historian of ancient life depending on the fossil record for his understanding of evolution.
From page 344...
... His restless mind frequently carried him off in other directions at times into byways that led to productive research. Penguins, for instance, seem far from primitive mammals, his first love, but their unusual morphologies, behaviors, and distributions posed irresistible evolutionary and social problems that led Simpson to study them intensely over a number of years.
From page 345...
... In his lucid writing, exemplified in Discoverers, he paints pictures in which the founders of South American paleontology come alive in a style found only in the best biographies. Another direction in Simpson's career that is often overlooked was his role in education.
From page 346...
... For a number of years its original purpose, to serve as an informal forum for the exchange of ideas without formal papers or a scientific journal, was served by annual gatherings of thirty to forty persons. The open meetings, freedom of discussion, and evening "bull sessions" over a toddy or two were grand, and news of activities was carried (as it is today in a News Bulletin.
From page 347...
... the worIcI, the News Bulletin carries items from foreign regions, anct scientific articles appear in the Society journal. Fielc!
From page 348...
... Theodosius Dobzhansky was not only a respected and inspirational colleague of Simpson but a revered friend, both during the years at Columbia and later, when their paths diverged. In my judgment his two closest friends among paleontologists were Bryan Patterson, at Harvard in his later years, and Paul 0.
From page 349...
... made (recorded on a garbler! tape of a session on the "Emergence of Synthetic Theory of Evolution," sponsored by Ernst Mayr)
From page 350...
... sometimes directly cutting. His clifficult childhood, bad health, and rapid education broken by long absences perhaps benefittec!
From page 351...
... New York: Macmillan Co. 1937 The Fort Union of the Crazy Mountain field, Montana and its mammalian faunas.
From page 352...
... 87:100. 1947 Holarctic mammalian faunas and continental relationships during the Cenozoic.
From page 353...
... 1980 Splendid isolation. The curious history of the South American mammals.


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