Philip Dean Gingerich (born March 23, 1946) is an American paleontologist and educator.
His research focus is on vertebrate paleontology, especially the Paleocene-Eocene transition and early Cenozoic mammals.
[1] His primary research focus is on the origin of modern orders of mammals and he is a leading expert on the evolution of primates and whales.
[3] Gingerich grew up in a family of Amish Mennonites in eastern Iowa, where his grandfather was a farmer and a lay preacher.
Yet Gingerich felt no contradiction between religion and science: "My grandfather had an open mind about the age of the Earth," he says, "and never mentioned evolution.