George Gaylord Simpson
George Gaylord Simpson, Ph.D. (Geology, Yale University, 1926), was Professor of Geosciences at the University of Arizona from 1968 until his retirement in 1982. Previously was Curator of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University 1959–1970, Curator of the Department of Geology and Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History 1945–1959, and Professor of Zoology at Columbia University.
He was awarded the Linnean Society of London's prestigious Darwin-Wallace Medal in 1958. Simpson also received the Royal Society's Darwin Medal 'In recognition of his distinguished contributions to general evolutionary theory, based on a profound study of palaeontology, particularly of vertebrates,' in 1962. In 1966, Simpson received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
“The passion for naming things is an odd human trait. It is strange that men always feel so much more at ease when they have put appellations on the things around them and that a wild, new region almost seems familiar and subdued once enough names have been used on it, even though in fact it is not changed in the slightest. Or, on second thought, it is perhaps not really strange. The urge to name must be as old as the human race, as old as speech which is one of the really fundamental characteristics by which we rise above the brutes, and thus a basic and essential part of the human spirit or soul. The naming fallacy is common enough even in science. Many a scientist claims to have explained some phenomenon when in truth all he has done is to give it a name. ”