Johanna Gabrielle Ottilie "Tilly" Edinger (13 November 1897 – 27 May 1967) 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 Heidelberg University and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München 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 Goethe University 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" (1921-1927). Edinger continued to work as an unpaid curator at the Senckenberg Museum (1927-1938).
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 (Fossil Brains), 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. Unfortunately, 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. Her career took a heavy hit once she developed hearing problems, as she was no longer able to sit at museum lectures because they would require her being in the front. However, she was reluctant to leave Germany, famously stating « So long as they leave me alone I will stay. After all, Frankfurt is my home[;] my mother’s family has been here since 1560, I was born in this house. » Nontheless, in summer 1938, Edinger applied for an American visa with the hope of being able to leave Germany. Although the decision was weighing heavily on her, Edinger’s decision was forced on Kristallnacht”, November 9-10th, where she was discovered on 11th and was forced to consider emigrating elsewhere. In December 1938, Philipp 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, owing to her groundbreaking work in palaeoneurology. 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 (MCZ), 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 worsened. 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 tragically struck and killed.
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