Amos Edwin Simpson proudly served in the United States Navy during WWII as a naval radio reconnaissance operator in the Marshall Islands. He earned a Ph.D. in Modern German History from the University of California at Berkeley and served on the faculties at the San Francisco State University and the University of Arkansas before joining the Department of History in 1956 at Southwestern Louisiana Institute (became University of Southwestern Louisiana; now University of Louisiana at Lafayette).

Dr. Simpson chaired the USL Department of History from 1966-1971 and served as Assistant to the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. He was a co-founder of the Center for Louisiana Studies and was the Frank A. Godchaux Honor Professor of History until his retirement in 1995. He was married to Vaughn Baker for 33 years and had one daughter, Thetis Cusimano. He passed away in 2014 in Lafayette and is buried in Lafayette Memorial Park Cemetery.

Dr. Simpson was the author of several books and historical articles and a former president of the Louisiana Historical Association, the Southwestern Historical Association, the Southwestern Social Science Association, and the European History section of the Southern Historical Association. He also taught abroad with the University of New Orleans summer program in Innsbruck, Austria, co-founded the UL-France Study Abroad Program, and was a Fullbright Scholar in India and China.