William Diller Matthew was a vertebrate paleontologist who worked primarily on mammal fossils, although he also published a few early papers on mineralogy. Matthew was curator of the American Museum of Natural History from the mid-1890s to 1927, and director of the University of California Museum of Paleontology from 1927 to 1930. He was an elected member of the American Philosophical Society.[6] He was the father of Margaret Matthew Colbert, an artist, illustrator, and sculptor who specialized in visualizing extinct species.