William Berryman Scott

William Berryman Scott (February 12, 1858 – March 29, 1947) was an American vertebrate paleontologist and professor of geology and paleontology at Princeton University. He was elected in 1886 a Member of the American Philosophical Society, in 1906 a Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and in 1925 a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received in 1910 the Wollaston Medal, in 1930 the Mary Clark Thompson Medal, in 1939 the Penrose Medal, and in 1940 the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal. Quotes Comparative anatomy suffers from the drawback that it cannot with certainty distinguish between resemblances due to genetic affinity, on the other hand, and those which are the results of convergence or parallelism, on the other, and it possesses no trustworthy criterion, by which it can test the taxonomic significance of structural characters. Article LI.—On Variations and Mutations 48 287 November 1894 American Journal of Science https://books.google.com/books?id=wDQaAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA356 355–374 (quote from p. 356) The day has gone forever gone by when any one mind, however profound and comprehensive, can take all knowledge for its province. Increase of knowledge, like advance of civilization, necessarily brings with it a division of labor, and each of the great branches of science becomes more and more minutely divided and subdivided for the purposes of investigation. Such subdivision greatly enhances the efficiency of the individual worker, enabling him to concentrate his attention upon some problem of more or less limited scope, and, so far, it is advantageous. On the other hand, like most human devices, it has its drawbacks, and what is gained in one direction is apt to be lost in another. One great and growing evil is the subdiviision of knowledge which accompanies specialization of research. 14 August 1896 Paleontology as a morphological discipline Science 4 85 177–188 https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.4.85.177 Only two or three years ago an expedition from the American Museum of Natural History discovered a place in Wyoming where the White River Formation White River beds lie directly upon those of the Uinta River Uinta, thus fully confirming the inference as to the relative age of the two Geologic formation formations which had long ago been drawn from the comparative study of their fossil mammals.The palæontological method of determining the geological date of the stratified rocks is thus an indispensable means of correlating the scattered exposures of the strata in widely separated regions and in different continents, it may be with thousands of miles of intervening ocean. The general principle employed is that close similarity of fossils in the rocks of the regions compared points to an approximately contemporaneous date of formation of those rocks. The principal must not, however, be applied in an offhand or uncritical manner, or it will lead to serious error. 1913 A history of Land Mammals in the Western Hemisphere New York The Macmillan Company https://books.google.com/books?id=munUAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA11 11 (693 pages) Quotes about William Berryman Scott Among Scott's outstanding contributions to the study of evolution were two memoirs, both published in 1891, the first on Poebrotherium and the second on Mesohippus and Leptomeryx. Besides the descriptive parts of these papers, the first included a list of what Scott considered the most important questions regarding evolution and the second attempted to answer these questions from the paleontological point of view. George Gaylord Simpson, William Berryman Scott 1858–1947 Biographical Memoirs 1948 25 7 175–203 https://www.nasonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/scott-william-b.pdf National Academy of Sciences (quote from p. 186) External links Princeton Party at Twin Lakes, 1877 Graphic Arts, Princeton University https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2017/12/05/princeton-party-at-twin-lakes-1877/ Category:1858 births Category:1947 deaths Category:Academics from the United States Category:Members of the American Philosophical Society Category:Paleontologists Category:Non-fiction authors from the United States Category:Princeton University alumni Category:Princeton University faculty Category:Scientists from Cincinnati