George Gaylord Simpson (1902-1984), an American paleontologist, moved frequently from New York's American Museum of Natural History, where he was curator, to lecture halls and remote fossil fields. His mastery of the fossil record led to significant advances in theoretical evolution and taxonomy.

Paleontology gives rise to the greatest source of empirical knowledge about the history of life. Yet paleontology, which grew and flourished as a descriptive science throughout the 19th and into the early 20th century, contributed little to the theoretical understanding of biology before 1940. George Gaylord Simpson entered this profession in the mid-1920s and demonstrated in the following years that quantitative and deductive methods could lead to accurate and not otherwise accessible conclusions about the history of life.

Education in Colorado and at Yale

George Gaylord Simpson was born in Chicago on June 16, 1902. While he was still very young, his parents, Julia Kinney and Joseph...