George G. Simpson (1902-1984): Getting Started in the Summer of 1924

In the middle of his first year of graduate work in vertebrate paleontology at Yale, George Gaylord Simpson began looking about for employment for the coming summer. He needed a job that would not only further his paleontological education, but also, with a wife and infant daughter to support, one that would pay him a salary, however modest. He eventually obtained a position prospecting for Tertiary mammals in Texas and New Mexico as a field assistant to William Diller Matthew of the American Museum of Natural History.

By the end of the summer, Simpson established himself as an energetic and highly successful field man, having made two major fossil discoveries, thereby impressing both Richard Swan Lull, his major advisor at Yale, and Matthew, whom he would eventually succeed at the American Museum as curator of fossil mammals. When Simpson returned to Yale in the fall, Lull, despite his earlier refusal, permitted him to study the Marsh Collection of Mesozoic mammals for his dissertation. Matthew, too, was enthusiastic about Simpson's demonstrated abilities for he became Simpson's mentor, acting as informal off-campus advisor for his dissertation and eventually an advocate for Simpson's appointment at the American Museum.

Simpson also learned, the hard way, about scientific protocol and professional territoriality when a short paper he wrote describing the geologic results of his work in New Mexico was suppressed by Childs Frick, honorary curator of the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology who had supported the New Mexico (and Texas) excursion with his own funds. Frick's financial support of the Museum apparently gave him greater influence than Matthew who, as chairman of Vertebrate Paleontology, had initially approved Simpson's paper for publication in the Museum Bulletin.