Alfred W. Crompton
South African paleontologist and zoologist (1927- )
Alfred Walter "Fuzz" Crompton (born 21 February 1927 in Durban) is a South African paleontologist and zoologist.
Crompton studied at the University of Stellenbosch and obtained a bachelor's degree in 1947 and a masters in 1949, in zoology. He completed his PhD at Cambridge University in 1953.
From 1954 to 1956 Crompton curated the national paleontological museum at Bloemfontein, and from 1956 to 1964 directed the South African Museum in Cape Town, where he also lectured at the university. From 1964 to 1970 he was a professor of biology and geology at Yale University, and Director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History. From 1970 to 1982 he directed the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, and from 1970 until 1999 was a professor at Harvard University (Fisher Professor of Natural History). In 1999 Crompton was named the emeritus Fisher Research Professor of Natural History.
In 1976/77 and 1983/64 Crompton was a Guggenheim Fellow. He is a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1969) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2011 he received the Romer-Simpson-Medal.
“Alfred W. Crompton” enters the record as south African paleontologist and zoologist (1927- ). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Alfred, Crompton and South can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15437632. VIAF identifies the subject as 66094853. The Library of Congress control number is no98111851. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1927, 1947, 1949 and 1953.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alfred W. Crompton” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.