Tilly Edinger
Johanna Gabrielle Ottilie "Tilly" Edinger was a German-American paleontologist and the founder of paleoneurology.
Personal life
Early life
Tilly Edinger was born to a wealthy Jewish family in 1897. Her father, Ludwig Edinger, founded Frankfurt's first neurological research institute, providing Edinger with multiple contacts in the scientific community that helped drive her career. She was the youngest of three siblings. Her brother Fritz was killed during the Holocaust and her sister Dr. Dora Lipschitz emigrated to the United States. As a teenager, Edinger began to lose her hearing. She required hearing aids, and as an adult she was completely deaf and could not hear without them.Edinger was educated at Schiller-Schule, which was a secondary school for girls in Frankfurt. In 1916, Edinger studied at University of Heidelberg and University of Munich to receive a major in zoology, but later changed to geology/paleontology. Edinger began work on a doctoral dissertation in 1920 with her mentor Fritz Drevermann at the University of Frankfurt. In 1921, parts of her doctoral thesis were published in the journal Senckenbergiana. After completing her degree, Edinger worked at the Geological-Paleontological Institute of the University of Frankfurt as an unpaid "Volunteer-Assistentin". Edinger continued to work as an unpaid curator at the Senckenberg Museum.
Later life
Edinger began her professional career in 1921 as a paleontology research assistant at the University of Frankfurt, a position she held until 1927. That year, she moved to a curatorial position in vertebrate paleontology at the Naturmuseum Senckenberg where she continued to work until 1938, her position allowed her to spend time researching and studying vertebrates. While there, she wrote and then published in 1929 the founding work of paleoneurology, Die Fossilen Gehirne, which was based on her discovery that mammalian brains left imprints on fossil skulls, allowing paleoneurologists to discern their anatomy. She used endocasts to examine the brain case's interior, a method that was influential in the field. She was heavily influenced in her work by Otto Schindewolf, Louis Dollo and Friedrich von Huene, contemporary vertebrate paleontologists. Being Jewish, her career in Germany became much more difficult to conduct when the Nazi Party rose to power in 1933 and began enforcing "racial laws" that targeted the Jewish population. For the next five years, she continued to work in secret at the Naturmuseum Senckenberg under the protection of the Museum Director, Rudolf Richter. Then, in summer 1938, Edinger applied for an American visa with the hope of being able to leave Germany. However, after “Kristallnacht”, November 9-10th, she was discovered on 11th and was forced to consider emigrating elsewhere. In December 1938, Phillipp Schwartz former professor at the University of Frankfurt, used his formerly established Notgemeinschaft Deutscher Wissenschaftler im Ausland society to provide aid to Edinger. Through this society, she was provided a position as a translator in London in May 1939. Her American immigration visa was accepted just a year after she took the position in London.On May 11, 1940, she arrived in New York and soon after moved to Massachusetts to take a position at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, where she published her second seminal work, The Evolution of the Horse Brain in 1948, three years after becoming a citizen of the U.S. She took leave from Harvard for the 1944–1945 academic year to be a professor of comparative anatomy at Wellesley College, a position she resigned after her hearing deteriorated severely. Edinger's work on fossil horse brains showed that evolution was a branching process, as structures could evolve independently, such as the large forebrain found in advanced mammals. This challenged the prevailing theory of the time, anagenesis, and led to the modern understanding of cladogenesis. In 1963 and 1964, Edinger was elected the president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, reflecting her prominence in the field. Tilly bones, thickened bones on the vertebral columns of some fish species, are named in her honor.
During her time in Cambridge, Edinger would often return to Frankfurt to visit, as she was very loyal to her hometown for presenting her with an honorary degree. Edinger retired at sixty-seven. She worked at the Museum of Comparative Zoology for twenty-five years. Upon retirement she served as an advisor at the MCZ and continued with her writing. On May 27, 1967, while crossing a street in Cambridge, she was unaware of an oncoming vehicle and was fatally struck and killed.
Education
Her early education was provided by several governesses, many of whom taught in both French and English - a quality that proved to serve her well later in life. Her first formal schooling was at Frankfurt's all-girls' high school, known as the Schiller-Schule. Her father did not approve of her following in his footsteps in neurology as he did not believe women belonged in science. Nevertheless, he later used his position in the scientific community to assist in finding connections to help further her career. Consequently, she matriculated from Heidelberg University and the University of Munich in 1916, where she remained until 1918. This was a time when women were stating to be admitted to universities in Germany. She initially studied zoology but switched to paleontology in which she was much happier. The classes she took in zoology, geology, psychology and paleontology allowed her to take her interest in neurology and relate it to geological evidence, later building the foundations of paleoneurology. Despite Edinger's education, her mother still saw her studies as nothing more than a hobby. She began her doctoral studies at the University of Frankfurt. Her study of the brain of Nothosaurus, a Triassic marine reptile, earned her a Ph.D. in natural philosophy in 1921 and was the topic of her first publication. After completing her Ph.D., she carried out more research in paleontology part-time and was a curator of fossil vertebrates for Senckenberg Museum.| Start date | Finish Date | School | Subject Matter |
| Pre 1909 | Mid 1915 | Governess | Early education |
| Pre 1909 | Mid 1915 | Private Tutor | Early education |
| 1909 | 1916 | Schiller-schule | Secondary |
| 1916 | 1918 | Heidelberg University | Post-secondary |
| 1916 | 1918 | University of Munich | Post-secondary |
| 1918 | 1921 | University of Frankfurt | Doctorate |