my first inkling of how to go systemati- cally about finding out such facts.”

University Years After skipping several years in school, Simpson at age 16 entered the University of Colorado at Boulder in the fall of 1918. He thought perhaps he wanted to be a creative writer, but in his second year he enrolled in a geology course and was quickly converted, in part because of the enthusiasm and en- couragement of his instructor, Arthur Tieje, the first teacher who recognized and chal- lenged his formidable intellectual abilities. In his senior year, Simpson transferred to Yale, because Tieje advised him that if he wanted to be a geologist and paleontologist, Yale was the best place to study. Perhaps additional reasons for the transfer were his not getting the editorship of the college humor magazine he helped start and—insult added to injury— the new editor then stealing his girlfriend. GGeorgeeorge GaylordGaylord After graduation, Simpson stayed on at Yale for his doctoral studies where, in SSimpsonimpson ((1902-1984)1902-1984) the basement of the Peabody Museum, he discovered a large collection of primi- LLéoéo FF.. LLaporte,aporte, EEartharth SSciences,ciences, UniversityUniversity ofof tive mammals from Mesozoic age rocks CCalifornia,alifornia, SSantaanta CCruz,ruz, [email protected]@ucsc.edu of the American West that he wanted to study for his doctoral dissertation. But in the early 1950s. He claimed that “field work was the next best his advisor, Richard Swann Lull, told him thing in life after a loving wife”—his, of course. that “those fossils are much too impor- tant…very delicate and highly signifi- hat motivates a person to pursue a and Mode in , published two years cant…for a young graduate student.” Wcareer in science? The distinguished later, that applied the concepts and conclu- American paleontologist, George Gaylord sions of the new discoveries in genetics to First Field Work Simpson, claimed “Nothing learned [in high the extensive fossil evidence of life’s long At the end of his first year of graduate school] had any bearing at all on the big history. He claimed that the small-scale work, Simpson obtained a position pros- and real questions. Who am I? What am I “microevolution” of the geneticist could pecting for Tertiary mammals in Texas and doing here? What is the world? What is my adequately explain the large-scale “macro- New Mexico as a field assistant to William relationship to it?” Later, in college, he had evolution” of the paleontologist, thereby Diller Matthew, chairman of the department come to the conclusion that “life is the most validating the usefulness of fossil evidence of at the American Museum. important thing about the world, the most for addressing evolutionary questions. Matthew was one of the leading paleomam- malogists, particularly known for his research important thing about life is evolution.” Early Life on Cenozoic mammals and for his book Such motivating questions inspired Simpson was born in Chicago, on 16 Climate and Evolution (1915). He was also Simpson’s lifelong study of the history and June 1902, the only son and third child of a leading student of horse evolution. By the evolution of life on Earth. By the late 1930s his attorney father and missionary-raised end of the summer, Simpson had shown and early 1940s, Simpson, though rela- mother. His Scots ancestry and missionary himself to be an energetic and highly suc- tively young, was already a distinguished background led to a strict Presbyterian up- cessful field man, having made two unique paleontologist at the American Museum bringing. By age nine, Simpson was made fossil discoveries. The first was the skull of of Natural History in New York City. His a formal member of the church but soon an important link between ancestral Pliocene achievements included a Yale doctorate after “deconverted” when he decided in a and modern horses. The second was the in geology, research position at the British fit of childish peevishness that he “did not skull, backbone, and rib cage of a Miocene Museum, leadership of two fossil-collecting want to forsake forever being naughty.” “dog-bear,” a heavy, large, doglike carnivore. expeditions to Patagonia, two books, and At about the same time, he talked his Lull was suitably impressed by these more than one hundred scientific articles parents into purchasing the Encyclopedia discoveries and permitted Simpson to and monographs—all topped off by elec- Britannica, which he read straight through. study the Mesozoic-age mammals af- tion to the National Academy of Sciences “I think it gave me my first conception of ter all. Matthew, too, was enthusiastic, and the American Philosophical Society. the world of learning as a whole, my first for he became Simpson’s informal off- Before leaving for military service in 1942, definite feeling for organized facts, and Simpson completed a major text, Tempo campus advisor for his dissertation and

16 SEPTEMBER 2004, GSA TODAY later an advocate for his subsequent ap- considered leaving the museum altogether. arly gold medals he had been awarded. pointment at the American Museum. Instead, he enlisted in the U.S. Army in In the last years of his life, Simpson had But, in the beginning, the search for fos- December 1942, and was made a captain become a memory from the past, as often sils that summer was hardly promising. As in military intelligence. He surprised his happens, even to the most distinguished of Simpson wrote to his sister Martha, “I’ve been superiors by completing a six-week course scientists. Most thoughtful students of pale- digressing all over the landscape.… Now & in intelligence methods in a single week. ontology and evolution were aware of what then we find a fossil—every third day or so, He shipped out to North Africa, later mov- Simpson had contributed, but now took it for if small fragments count.…Poor Dr. Matthew ing on to Sicily and Italy, until 1944, when granted. They looked instead to the writings gets madder & madder [:] ‘First…formation he was sent home with a severe case of of younger paleontologists and evolutionary in which I couldn’t find mammals.’” Part hepatitis. By then, he held the rank of major biologists for new ideas. In a way, Simpson of Matthew’s chagrin was no doubt due to and had been awarded two Bronze Stars. had outlived his fame, and had become a Simpson’s initial clumsiness. Matthew had When Simpson returned to the museum, living, mostly ignored monument of what found some important horse teeth and, the controversial reorganization plan had had come before. A hint of his state of mind after treating them with shellac, laid one been scrapped and a more attractive plan is revealed in a posthumously published of them on the ground to dry. Simpson was imposed, which included a department work of science fiction (The Dechronization promptly stepped on the tooth, breaking of geology and paleontology of which he of Sam Magruder, St. Martin’s Press, 1996). it into several pieces. Matthew glowered, was named chairman. He also accepted an Simpson tells the story of Sam Magruder, telling Simpson, “Go stand over there,” and appointment as professor of vertebrate pa- who was experimenting on the “quantum didn’t talk to him for several hours. But by leontology at . In 1949, theory of time-motion” in 2162 A.D. when the next day the incident was forgotten. Simpson published a popular account of he suffers a “time-slip” that puts him back Simpson received his Yale Ph.D. in modern evolutionary theory from the point in the Late Cretaceous of New Mexico. 1926 and went to the British Museum of of view of the fossil evidence, The Meaning Helplessly lost in time and with no hope of Natural History in London to continue of Evolution, which was subsequently trans- returning to the present, Magruder ekes out his study of the then little-known, primi- lated into ten languages and sold some a primitive existence for some years until a tive mammals by examining British and half-million copies. In 1958, he resigned fatal accident befalls him. Before his death, European counterparts. The subsequent the department chairmanship and soon Magruder manages to chisel out his experi- two publications of his Yale research on after left for the Museum of Comparative ence and philosophy of life on eight rock American Mesozoic mammals and on and Harvard University. slabs that are recovered many millions of the British Museum fossils quickly estab- The centennial of Darwin’s On the Origin years later, and so his story becomes known. lished his paleontological reputation. of Species in 1959 not only signaled a fresh Always more comfortable in express- American Museum of Natural History start for Simpson at Cambridge, but also ing his views in writing than in speak- On his return from England in the fall of brought him further into the limelight as ing, Simpson appears to use this work of 1927, Simpson joined the American Museum a leading evolutionist. Conferences and science fiction to reveal his own, mostly as assistant curator of fossil vertebrates, as- symposia marked the centennial, with melancholy, views about life’s meaning suming a position left vacant when Matthew Simpson often present either as a contribu- and purpose, the importance of adapting moved to the University of California at tor—as in Chicago where he gave a key- to the here-and-now, and how historical Berkeley. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, note public lecture at the meeting of the contingency controls subsequent outcomes. Simpson’s work turned more theoretical American Association for the Advancement Was Simpson speaking for himself when as he shifted his attention to more general of Science, titled “The World into Which Magruder declares “My real purpose in en- problems of evolution rather than focusing Darwin Led Us”—or as an honoree—as graving these slabs is a search for compre- solely on fossil mammals. Simpson pub- in London where he received the Darwin- hension…I am exploring my own nature”? lished Quantitative Zoology, co-authored Wallace Commemorative Medal from the In the summer of 1984, Simpson with his second wife Anne Roe, and he Linnaean Society, in whose meeting rooms contracted pneumonia during a South completed two book-length manuscripts, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace Pacific cruise and was in and out of the Tempo and Mode in Evolution, and Principles first announced their theory of natural se- hospital several times over the next few of Classification and a Classification of lection a century earlier. Nor was Simpson months. He finally succumbed on the Mammals. He also managed to publish a ignored at home: in February 1966, he evening of Saturday, 6 October 1984, at picaresque travel narrative of his first pa- received the National Medal of Science the age of 82. His remains were cremated leontologic expedition to Patagonia in the from President Lyndon B. Johnson. and dispersed in the Arizona desert. early 1930s where, upon arrival in Buenos Final Years References Aires, he found himself in the midst of a In 1967, Simpson and his wife Anne Roe Laporte, L.F., editor, 1987, Simple Curiosity: Letters from George revolution, barely escaping with his life. retired to Tucson, Arizona. He continued Gaylord Simpson to his Family, 1921–1970, University of California Press. In 1942, the new director of the American to work for the next decade and a half in Laporte, L.F., 2000, George Gaylord Simpson—Paleontologist and Museum was contemplating major depart- a small building next to his house, sur- Evolutionist: Columbia University Press. mental reorganization by putting the zoolo- rounded by his research files and extensive See also http://people.ucsc.edu/~laporte/simpson/Index.html (case gists working with living groups with the personal library, walls and surfaces scattered sensitive). “Rock Stars” is produced by the GSA History of Geology Division. paleontologists studying their correspond- with honorary degrees, photographs from Editorial Committee: Kennard Bork (editor of this profile), Robert ing fossils. Simpson resisted this plan and the past, and replicas of the many schol- Dott, Robert Ginsburg, Gerard Middleton, Peter von Bitter, and E.L. (Jerry) Winterer.

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