William Berryman Scott (February 12, 1858 – March 29, 1947) was an American vertebratepaleontologist, authority on mammals, and principal author of the White RiverOligocene monographs. He was a professor of geology and paleontology at Princeton University.
Scott was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on February 12, 1858, the son of Mary Elizabeth Hodge Scott and William McKendree Scott, a Presbyterian minister. He was the youngest of three sons; his brother Hugh Lenox Scott went on to become superintendent of West Point and Army Chief of Staff. Shortly after the family moved to Princeton, New Jersey in 1861, his father died and the family lived with his maternal grandfather who was also a Presbyterian minister and an instructor at the Princeton Theological Seminary.[1][2]
His early education focused on theology, philosophy and the classics in preparation for an expected career as a minister. However, when he entered Princeton University in 1873 at the age of fifteen, he became interested in science, especially geology, psychology, and chemistry.[3] A course he took from the renowned Swiss geologist Arnold Guyot was a turning point in his career aspirations. He graduated from Princeton in 1877 and received a Ph.D. from University of Heidelberg in 1880. He married Alice Adeline Post on December 15, 1883.
Scott, William Berryman, 1858 The Osteology and Relations of Protoceras. Boston, Ginn & company, 1895. 1 p.l., [303]–374. 3 pl. (2 fold.) diagr. 26 cm.
Scott, William Berryman. Geological Climates, by W.B. Scott.
Scott, William Berryman. A History of Land Mammals in the Western Hemisphere. Illustrated with 32 plates and more than 100 drawings, by Bruce Horsfall. New York, The MacMillan Company, 1913.
^Fairchild, Herman LeRoy, 1932, The Geological Society of America 1888–1930, a Chapter in Earth Science History: New York, The Geological Society of America, 232 p.
^Eckel, Edwin, 1982, GSA Memoir 155, The Geological Society of America — Life History of a Learned Society: Boulder, Colorado, Geological Society of America Memoir 155, 168 p., ISBN0-8137-1155-X.
Sterling, Keir B., ed. (1997). "Scott, William Berryman". Biographical Dictionary of American and Canadian Naturalists and Environmentalists. Greenwood Press.
