George Gaylord Simpson

Short description: American paleontologist (1902–1984)

George Gaylord Simpson

ForMemRS

Simpson in 1965

Born| (1902-06-16)June 16, 1902

Chicago, Illinois

Died| October 6, 1984(1984-10-06) (aged 82)

Tucson, Arizona

Nationality| American
Alma mater|

* University of Colorado
* Yale University, B.A., Ph.D.[1]

Known for| Modern synthesis; quantum evolution
Awards|

* Mary Clark Thompson Medal (1943)
* Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal (1944)
* Hayden Memorial Geological Award (1950)
* Penrose Medal (1952)
* Darwin-Wallace Medal (1958)
* Darwin Medal (1962)
* Linnean Medal (1962)
* National Medal of Science (1965)
* Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal (1965)
* Paleontological Society Medal (1973)
* Foreign Member of the Royal Society[1]

Scientific career
Fields| Paleontology
Institutions| Columbia University
Doctoral advisor| Richard Swann Lull[1]

George Gaylord Simpson (June 16, 1902 – October 6, 1984) was an American paleontologist. Simpson was perhaps the most influential paleontologist of the twentieth century, and a major participant in the modern synthesis, contributing Tempo and Mode in Evolution (1944), The Meaning of Evolution (1949) and The Major Features of Evolution (1953). He was an expert on extinct mammals and their intercontinental migrations.[2] Simpson was extraordinarily knowledgeable about Mesozoic fossil mammals and fossil mammals of North and South America. He anticipated such concepts as punctuated equilibrium (in Tempo and Mode) and dispelled the myth that the evolution of the horse was a linear process culminating in the modern Equus caballus. He coined the word hypodigm in 1940, and published extensively on the taxonomy of fossil and extant mammals.[3] Simpson was influentially, and incorrectly, opposed to Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift,[4] but accepted the theory of plate tectonics (and continental drift) when the evidence became conclusive.

He was Professor of Zoology at Columbia University, and Curator of the Department of Geology and Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History from 1945 to 1959. He was Curator of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University from 1959 to 1970, and a Professor of Geosciences at the University of Arizona from 1968 until his retirement in 1982.

## Contents

* 1 Awards and honors
* 2 Views
* 3 Books
* 4 See also
* 5 References
* 6 Further reading
* 7 External links

## Awards and honors

Simpson was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1936 and the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1941.[5][6] In 1943 Simpson was awarded the Mary Clark Thompson Medal from the National Academy of Sciences.[7] For his work, Tempo and mode in evolution, he was awarded the academy's Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal in 1944.[8] He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1948.[9] 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.[10]

At the University of Arizona, Tucson, the Gould-Simpson Building was named in honor of Simpson and Minnesota geologist and polar explorer Lawrence M. Gould, who, like Simpson, also accepted an appointment as Professor of Geosciences at the University of Arizona after his formal retirement.[11] Simpson was noted for his work in the fields of paleobiogeography and animal evolution.

## Views

In the 1960s, Simpson "rubbished the then-nascent science of exobiology, which concerned itself with life on places other than Earth, as a science without a subject".[12]

He was raised as a Christian but in his early teens became an agnostic, nontheist, and philosophical naturalist.[13]

## Books

* Attending marvels (1931)
* Quantitative Zoology (1939)
* Tempo and Mode in Evolution (1944)
* The Principles of Classification and A Classification of Mammals (1945)
* The Meaning of Evolution (1949, 1951)
* Horses (1951)
* Evolution and Geography (1953)
* The Major Features of Evolution (1953)
* Life: An Introduction to Biology (1957)
* Quantitative Zoology (1960)
* Principles of Animal Taxonomy (1961)
* This View of Life (1964)
* The Geography of Evolution (1965)
* Penguins (1976)
* Concession to the Improbable (1978) (an autobiography)
* Fossils and the History Of Life (1983)
* Splendid Isolation (1980)
* The Dechronization of Sam Magruder (posthumously published novella, 1996)

## See also

* Annie Montague Alexander, who helped finance some of his early work

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Whittington, H. B. (1986). "George Gaylord Simpson. 16 June 1902-6 October 1984". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 32: 525–39. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1986.0017. PMID 11621258.
2. ↑ Simpson G.G. 1940. Mammals and land bridges. Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 30: 137–163. See Charles H. Smith's website for full text: [1]
3. ↑ Simpson, G. G. (1940). "Types in modern taxonomy". American Journal of Science 238 (6): 413–426. doi:10.2475/ajs.238.6.413. Bibcode: 1940AmJS..238..413S. p. 418.
4. ↑ Simpson G.G. 1953. Evolution and geography: an essay on historical biogeography with special reference to mammals. Oregon State System of Higher Education: Eugene, Oregon.
5. ↑ "APS Member History". https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=George+G.+Simpson&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=&year-max=&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced.
6. ↑ "George G. Simpson". http://www.nasonline.org/member-directory/deceased-members/20001972.html.
7. ↑ "Mary Clark Thompson Medal". National Academy of Sciences. http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AWARDS_thompson.
8. ↑ "Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal". National Academy of Sciences. http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AWARDS_elliot.
9. ↑ "George Gaylord Simpson" (in en). 2023-02-09. https://www.amacad.org/person/george-gaylord-simpson.
10. ↑ "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". American Academy of Achievement. https://achievement.org/our-history/golden-plate-awards/#science-exploration.
11. ↑ Gould-Simpson Building, Univ. of Arizona
12. ↑ Anon (2006). "Astrobiology at ten". Nature 440 (7084): 582. doi:10.1038/440582a. PMID 16572129. Bibcode: 2006Natur.440Q.582..
13. ↑ Léo F. Laporte, ed (1987). Simple Curiosity: Letters from Gaylord Simpson to His Family, 1921-1970. University of California Press. p. 16. ISBN 9780520057920. https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_oTFEYuvKCWIC. "By his early teens, Simpson had given up being a Christian, although he had not formally declared himself an atheist. At college he began the gradual development of what might best be called positivistic agnosticism: a belief that the world could be known and explained by ordinary empirical observation without recourse to supernatural forces. Ultimate causation, he considered unknowable."

## Further reading

* Aronson, J. (2002). "'Molecules and monkeys': George Gaylord Simpson and the challenge of molecular evolution". History & Philosophy of the Life Sciences 24 (3–4): 441–465. doi:10.1080/03919710210001714503. PMID 15045833.
* Gershenowitz, H. (1978). "George Gaylord Simpson and Lamarck". Indian Journal of History of Science 13 (1): 56–61. PMID 11615952.
* Laporte, L. O. F. (1994). "Simpson on species". Journal of the History of Biology 27 (1): 141–159. doi:10.1007/BF01058629. PMID 11639257.
* Olson, E. C. (1991). "George Gaylord Simpson: June 16, 1902-October 6, 1984". Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences 60: 331–353. PMID 11616139.
* Laporte, Léo F. (1991). "George Gaylord Simpson as mentor and apologist for paleoanthropology". American Journal of Physical Anthropology 84 (1): 1–16. doi:10.1002/ajpa.1330840102. PMID 2018099.
* Laporte, L. F. (1983). "Simpson's Tempo and Mode in Evolution revisited". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 127 (6): 365–417. PMID 11611330.

## External links

* George Gaylord Simpson — full and comprehensive biography by L. F. Laporte
* George Gaylord Simpson — biographical sketch from The Stephen Jay Gould Archive
* George Gaylord Simpson — a short biography from the PBS Evolution website
* George Gaylord Simpson Papers, American Philosophical Society.
* George Gaylord Simpson — Open Library

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United States National Medal of Science laureates

Behavioral and social science

| 1960s|

1964
Roger Adams
Othmar H. Ammann
Theodosius Dobzhansky
Neal Elgar Miller

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1980s|

1986
Herbert A. Simon
1987
Anne Anastasi
George J. Stigler
1988
Milton Friedman

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1990
Leonid Hurwicz
Patrick Suppes
1991
Robert W. Kates
George A. Miller
1992
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1994
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1995
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1996
Paul Samuelson
1997
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1998
William Julius Wilson
1999
Robert M. Solow

2000s|

2000
Gary Becker
2001
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2003
R. Duncan Luce
2004
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2005
Gordon H. Bower
2008
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2009
Mortimer Mishkin

2010s|

2011
Anne Treisman
2014
Robert Axelrod
2015
Albert Bandura

Biological sciences

| 1960s|

1963
C. B. van Niel
1964
Marshall W. Nirenberg
1965
Francis P. Rous
George G. Simpson
Donald D. Van Slyke
1966
Edward F. Knipling
Fritz Albert Lipmann
William C. Rose
Sewall Wright
1967
Kenneth S. Cole
Harry F. Harlow
Michael Heidelberger
Alfred H. Sturtevant
1968
Horace Barker
Bernard B. Brodie
Detlev W. Bronk
Jay Lush
Burrhus Frederic Skinner
1969
Robert Huebner
Ernst Mayr

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1970s|

1970
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1973
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1974
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1975
Hallowell Davis
Paul Gyorgy
Sterling B. Hendricks
Orville Alvin Vogel
1976
Roger Guillemin
Keith Roberts Porter
Efraim Racker
E. O. Wilson
1979
Robert H. Burris
Elizabeth C. Crosby
Arthur Kornberg
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Earl Reece Stadtman
George Ledyard Stebbins
Paul Alfred Weiss

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1981
Philip Handler
1982
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1983
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1986
Stanley Cohen
Donald A. Henderson
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George Emil Palade
Joan A. Steitz
1987
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Theodor O. Diener
Harry Eagle
Har Gobind Khorana
Rita Levi-Montalcini
1988
Michael S. Brown
Stanley Norman Cohen
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Maurice R. Hilleman
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1989
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1990
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1991
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1992
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1993
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1994
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1995
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1996
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1997
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Robert A. Weinberg
1998
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1999
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2000
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2001
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2002
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2003
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2004
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2005
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2007
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2014
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2015
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Chemistry

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1982
F. Albert Cotton
Gilbert Stork
1983
Roald Hoffmann
George C. Pimentel
Richard N. Zare
1986
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Yuan Tseh Lee
Carl S. Marvel
Frank H. Westheimer
1987
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Walter H. Stockmayer
Max Tishler
1988
William O. Baker
Konrad E. Bloch
Elias J. Corey
1989
Richard B. Bernstein
Melvin Calvin
Rudolph A. Marcus
Harden M. McConnell

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1990s|

1990
Elkan Blout
Karl Folkers
John D. Roberts
1991
Ronald Breslow
Gertrude B. Elion
Dudley R. Herschbach
Glenn T. Seaborg
1992
Howard E. Simmons Jr.
1993
Donald J. Cram
Norman Hackerman
1994
George S. Hammond
1995
Thomas Cech
Isabella L. Karle
1996
Norman Davidson
1997
Darleane C. Hoffman
Harold S. Johnston
1998
John W. Cahn
George M. Whitesides
1999
Stuart A. Rice
John Ross
Susan Solomon

2000s|

2000
John D. Baldeschwieler
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2001
Ernest R. Davidson
Gábor A. Somorjai
2002
John I. Brauman
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2006
Marvin H. Caruthers
Peter B. Dervan
2007
Mostafa A. El-Sayed
2008
Joanna Fowler
JoAnne Stubbe
2009
Stephen J. Benkovic
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2010
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2011
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2014
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Jerrold Meinwald
2015
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Geraldine L. Richmond

Engineering sciences

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1962
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1963
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1964
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1965
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1966
Claude E. Shannon
1967
Edwin H. Land
Igor I. Sikorsky
1968
J. Presper Eckert
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1969
Jack St. Clair Kilby

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1973
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1974
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1975
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1976
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1979
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1982
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1983
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1986
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1987
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1988
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1989
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1990
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Nick Holonyak Jr.
1991
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Alfred Y. Cho
1994
Ray W. Clough
1995
Hermann A. Haus
1996
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C. Kumar N. Patel
1998
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1999
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2000
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2001
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2002
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2006
Robert S. Langer
2007
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2008
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2009
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2010
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2011
John B. Goodenough
2014
Thomas Kailath

Mathematical, statistical, and computer sciences

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1963
Norbert Wiener
1964
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1965
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1966
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1967
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1968
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1969
William Feller

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1970s|

1970
Richard Brauer
1973
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1974
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1975
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1976
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1979
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Donald E. Knuth

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1982
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1983
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1986
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1987
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1988
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1989
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1990
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Stephen Cole Kleene
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1991
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1992
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1993
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1994
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1995
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1996
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1997
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1998
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1999
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2000
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2001
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2002
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2004
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2005
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2006
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2007
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Andrew J. Viterbi
2009
David B. Mumford

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2010
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2011
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2014
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2015
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Physical sciences

| 1960s|

1963
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1964
Julian Schwinger
Harold Clayton Urey
Robert Burns Woodward
1965
John Bardeen
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1966
Jacob Bjerknes
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Henry Eyring
John H. Van Vleck
Vladimir K. Zworykin
1967
Jesse Beams
Francis Birch
Gregory Breit
Louis Hammett
George Kistiakowsky
1968
Paul Bartlett
Herbert Friedman
Lars Onsager
Eugene Wigner
1969
Herbert C. Brown
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1970s|

1970
Robert H. Dicke
Allan R. Sandage
John C. Slater
John A. Wheeler
Saul Winstein
1973
Carl Djerassi
Maurice Ewing
Arie Jan Haagen-Smit
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Frederick Seitz
Robert Rathbun Wilson
1974
Nicolaas Bloembergen
Paul Flory
William Alfred Fowler
Linus Carl Pauling
Kenneth Sanborn Pitzer
1975
Hans A. Bethe
Joseph O. Hirschfelder
Lewis Sarett
Edgar Bright Wilson
Chien-Shiung Wu
1976
Samuel Goudsmit
Herbert S. Gutowsky
Frederick Rossini
Verner Suomi
Henry Taube
George Uhlenbeck
1979
Richard P. Feynman
Herman Mark
Edward M. Purcell
John Sinfelt
Lyman Spitzer
Victor F. Weisskopf

1980s|

1982
Philip W. Anderson
Yoichiro Nambu
Edward Teller
Charles H. Townes
1983
E. Margaret Burbidge
Maurice Goldhaber
Helmut Landsberg
Walter Munk
Frederick Reines
Bruno B. Rossi
J. Robert Schrieffer
1986
Solomon J. Buchsbaum
H. Richard Crane
Herman Feshbach
Robert Hofstadter
Chen-Ning Yang
1987
Philip Abelson
Walter Elsasser
Paul C. Lauterbur
George Pake
James A. Van Allen
1988
D. Allan Bromley
Paul Ching-Wu Chu
Walter Kohn
Norman F. Ramsey
Jack Steinberger
1989
Arnold O. Beckman
Eugene Parker
Robert Sharp
Henry Stommel

1990s|

1990
Allan M. Cormack
Edwin M. McMillan
Robert Pound
Roger Revelle
1991
Arthur L. Schawlow
Ed Stone
Steven Weinberg
1992
Eugene M. Shoemaker
1993
Val Fitch
Vera Rubin
1994
Albert Overhauser
Frank Press
1995
Hans Dehmelt
Peter Goldreich
1996
Wallace S. Broecker
1997
Marshall Rosenbluth
Martin Schwarzschild
George Wetherill
1998
Don L. Anderson
John N. Bahcall
1999
James Cronin
Leo Kadanoff

2000s|

2000
Willis E. Lamb
Jeremiah P. Ostriker
Gilbert F. White
2001
Marvin L. Cohen
Raymond Davis Jr.
Charles Keeling
2002
Richard Garwin
W. Jason Morgan
Edward Witten
2003
G. Brent Dalrymple
Riccardo Giacconi
2004
Robert N. Clayton
2005
Ralph A. Alpher
Lonnie Thompson
2006
Daniel Kleppner
2007
Fay Ajzenberg-Selove
Charles P. Slichter
2008
Berni Alder
James E. Gunn
2009
Yakir Aharonov
Esther M. Conwell
Warren M. Washington

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2011
Sidney Drell
Sandra Faber
Sylvester James Gates
2012
Burton Richter
Sean C. Solomon
2014
Shirley Ann Jackson

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