William Diller Matthew

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
William Diller Matthew

William Diller Matthew (born February 19, 1871 , Saint John (New Brunswick) (Canada), † September 24, 1930 , San Francisco ) was a Canadian-American vertebrate palaeontologist and zoogeographer . The focus of his research was on the paleogenic (tertiary) mammals . With his work he made a significant contribution to a modern understanding of the evolution of these animals.

Matthew was the scientific teacher of George Gaylord Simpson (1902-1984), who is considered one of the most influential paleontologists of the 20th century.

life and work

William Diller Matthew was the son of the eminent Canadian paleontologist George Frederic Matthew (1837-1923), a specialist in fossils from the Cambrian period . The young Matthew studied with the paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857-1935). From 1895 to 1927, Matthew worked in the Vertebrate Paleontology Department at the American Museum of Natural History . In 1911 he became the department's curator . From 1922 to 1927 he was chief curator of the Earth Sciences division. During this time he extensively studied the fossils collected by Edward Drinker Cope and published 240 scientific papers. When he left the museum in 1927, George Gaylord Simpson succeeded him. From that time until his death, Matthew was Professor of Paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley .

In his main work " Climate and Evolution " from 1915 he represented the thesis of the relative immutability ( fixism ) of continents and ocean basins compared to the land bridge hypothesis that had prevailed until then . The Landbrücken hypothesis was the common explanatory model for the current geographical distribution of the animal world and served as an explanation for the fact that closely related animal groups can now be found on widely separated continents. In his opinion, the animals should have traveled the oceanic deep-sea basins on natural rafts. Matthew's theory remained authoritative until the advent of plate tectonics theory in the 1960s .

The Matthew in the 30s represented years belief that most mammalian families and - Regulations in the northern Erdhemisphäre had arisen and then gradually spread to the south, was recognized racist and political moves. In remote areas, for example in Australia , a comparatively primitive fauna would then be preserved.

Significant works

  • Climate and Evolution Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences , vol. 24, 1915
  • Range and limitations of species as seen in fossil mammal faunas. In: Bulletin of the Geological Society of America 41. pp. 271-274.
  • Paleocene Faunas of the San Juan Basin, New Mexico (1937)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Matthew, William Diller
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Vertebrate paleontologist and zoogeographer
DATE OF BIRTH February 19, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint John (Canada)
DATE OF DEATH September 24, 1930
Place of death San Francisco