Tilly Edinger
Week of July 24, 2000

Renowned paleoneurologist Dr. Tilly Edinger is the Wellesley Person of the Week. She was born on November 13, 1897, in Frankfurt, Germany, where she was raised and educated. This hearing disabled daughter of a preeminent physician and comparative neurologist enrolled in Frankfurt's Schiller-Schule secondary school, at the age of 12 . Edinger took courses at the University of Heidelber, Germany's oldest university, and she graduated from the University of Frankfurt, earning her doctoral degree in paleontology in 1921.

In unpaid positions, she worked at Frankfurt University's Geological Institute and was appointed curator of the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History, a post she held for 11 years. During this period she studied paleontology, established the field of paleoneurology and published the book "Die Fossilen Gehirne" [Fossil Brains] in 1929. As the Nazi movement's influence widened in the 1930's, Edinger, a Jew, was initially encouraged by the museum's director to maintain a low profile at the museum, and was instructed to remove her nameplate from her office door. In 1938, she was forced to leave the museum by Nazi authorities. She fled Germany, arriving in London in May, 1939. Her brother, Friedrich, who remained in Germany, was a Holocaust victim, losing his life 1942.

Edinger remained in London for a year, and left for the United States in May, 1940, crossing the Atlantic aboard the Britannic. Shortly after her arrival she became a Research Associate in Paleontology, working at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. She taught comparative vertebrate anatomy at Wellesley College for 3 semesters, from 1943 to 1945.

In recognition of Edinger's leadership in the development of the field of paleoneurology, particularly her work with the evolution of the equid brain, she was granted honorary doctorates from Wellesley College in 1950, from the University of Giessen in 1957, and from the University of Frankfurt in 1964. Edinger was a founding member of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, and was elected as its president in 1963.

Tilly Edinger died on May 27, 1967, at the age of 69, from injuries following a traffic accident in Cambridge, MA.

To learn more about Tilly Edinger, please see "The gospel of the fossil brain: Tilly Edinger and the science of paleoneurology", Brain Research Bulletin, Vol. 48, No. 4, 1999, Elsevier Science Inc.

For an interesting overview of paleoneurology, please go to: http://www.neurophys.wisc.edu/brain/evolution/paleo/

Anyone with memories of Tilly Edinger at Wellesley College, is encouraged to contact Emily Buchholtz (Assoc. Professor of Biological Sciences) by email (ebuchholtz@wellesley.edu) or phone ((781) 283-3096).

Portrait photograph: Tilly Edinger, circa 1955, Courtesy of Ernst Mayr Library, MCZ, Harvard University.
Group photograph: Tilly Edinger and colleagues, field work in Texas, 1951, Courtesy of Dr. Donald Baird.

Written by Mur Wolf