Charles Lewis Gazin

Gazin was born in Colorado in 1904. He was close friends with the physicist Carl Anderson from an early age. Both men attended California Institute of Technology together for bachelor's and graduate education and received their doctorates on the same day in 1930. During the same year he began working for the United States Geological Survey. He was named Assistant Curator in the Division of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Smithsonian Institution in 1932. Ten years later, in 1942 he became Associate Curator and in 1946, a Curator of the Division. He was named Senior Paleobiologist in 1967, and when his retirement came in 1970, he got a Paleobiologist Emeritus position. Twelve years later in 1982 he became a Curator Emeritus. He wrote ninety-nine works on vertebrate paleontology, most of which were focused on mammalian paleontology. Gazin served as President of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology and was a Director of the American Geological Institute.[1]

Among his accomplishments, the Giant Ground Sloth of North America was discovered by Gazin, and has a specimen on display in the Smithsonian Natural History Museum.

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