TILLY EDINGER (1897-1967) AND THE BEGINNINGS OF VERTEBRATE PALEONEUROLOGY

The field of vertebrate paleoneurology was founded almost single-handedly by the paleontologist Ottilie (Tilly) Edinger in the 1920s. Edinger (1897-1967) was a member of a wealthy academic family in Frankfurt, Germany, and due to gender and wealth was not expected to pursue employment. Following her 1921 doctoral degree in geology, zoology and psychology from Frankfurt University, Edinger worked at unpaid positions at the Geological Institute of Frankfurt University and at the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History. Named Curator of Fossil Vertebrates at the Senckenberg in 1927, Edinger organized the vertebrate collections there, assembling a collection of cranial endocasts from European and American institutions. Her early descriptions of endocasts were completed within the framework of brain evolution established by O. C. Marsh, who asserted that mammalian brain size increased gradually during the Tertiary and could be used to predict the likelihood of extinction. In contrast, Edinger soon documented correlates between endocast morphology and both body size and lifestyle. Her dual preparation in zoology and geology informed her reconstructions of sequential neural innovations in related taxa from different stratigraphic horizons. In 1929, Edinger summarized her findings and her conflicts with Marsh in Die Fossilen Gehirne. Edinger’s work during the 1930s was restricted by anti-Jewish terrorism. She was progressively excluded from various academic interactions, from the Senckenberg Museum, and after Kristallnacht (November 1938) from most social interactions. On the basis of her scientific reputation, colleagues and friends facilitated her last minute exodus from Nazi Germany to London in May 1939, and then to Boston a year later. There she worked happily but without regular salary at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, then under the direction of A. S. Romer. Over the next quarter century, Edinger pursued a wealth of projects among which the most notable were the Evolution of the Horse Brain (1948), multiple papers on paleoendocrinology, and her massive annotated Bibliography of Paleoneurology 1804-1966. Edinger was a founding member of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology when it separated from the Geological Society of America in 1940, and served as its first female president in 1963-1964.