Tilly Edinger

Tilly Edinger (1930)

Johanna Gabriele Ottilie Edinger (born November 13, 1897 in Frankfurt am Main , † May 27, 1967 in Cambridge, USA ) was a paleontologist and the founder of paleoneurology . This subject is the study of fossil brain prints . Stephen Jay Gould described Edinger in an obituary as "one of the most extraordinary natural scientists of the 20th century".

Career

Tilly Edinger was the youngest daughter of Anna Edinger , b. Goldschmidt (1863–1929), a Frankfurt women's rights activist, founder and peace activist, and her husband Ludwig Edinger , a brain researcher and professor of neurology . In 1916 she passed the Abitur at the Frankfurt Schillerschule and then studied at the University of Heidelberg , the University of Frankfurt am Main and Munich "Natural Sciences": first geology , then zoology (especially comparative anatomy ) and also paleontology . In the border area of ​​geology and zoology, palaeozoology , she completed her doctoral thesis under Fritz Drevermann in Frankfurt am Main in 1920/21 , which was to be devoted to the anatomy of the palate of nothosaurs . In search of specimen copies, she came across a skull fragment of Nothosaurus mirabilis in Heidelberg , the cranial cavity of which was completely filled with sediment . She recognized this natural cast of the skull as the “fossil brain”. In her doctoral thesis, she also dealt with the precise analysis of the fossil notosaur brain. From 1921 to 1938, she then worked as a volunteer scientist at the Frankfurt Natural History Museum in Senckenberg, also on fossils of many other vertebrates .

For a long time, Tilly Edinger underestimated the mortal danger in which she was hovering as a result of the persecution of Jews that began since the National Socialist “ seizure of power ” in 1933 - among other things because her employer, the Senckenbergische Naturforschende Gesellschaft , had made it clear in 1933 that she would allow her Jewish employees to continue working unmolested . The director of the Senckenberg Museum , Rudolf Richter , was a member of the NSDAP , but considered the party's anti-Semitism to be a temporary aberration. It was only after the November pogroms of 1938 that she was no longer allowed to enter the museum, but still had the opportunity to travel to the USA via London, where she was able to continue working at Harvard University .

Grave site in the family grave in the Frankfurt main cemetery

On May 26, 1967, on the street in front of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, she failed to hear an approaching car due to her poor hearing and died the following day as a result of the accident. Her ashes were buried in her parents' grave in Frankfurt's main cemetery.

Research topics

In 1804, Georges Cuvier had already described cranial casts, but it was only Tilly Edinger who systematically examined such casts and made them useful for evolutionary research .

In order to reconstruct the shape and surface of a fossil brain , the skull of the fossil is poured with plaster of paris, for example . Such a skull discharge can also arise naturally: If the skull is initially in moving water, sediment can penetrate through the eye sockets or the occipital opening and later solidify in the skull to form a stone core. This can take the form of the brain surface and depict it in this way. If the water is saturated with calcium , lime can build up inside the skull; these limestone deposits then form the surface of the interior of the cranial cavity, whereby very detailed stone cores of fossil brain cavities can arise. There are finds in which, in addition to the bones, brain convolutions ( gyri ) and blood vessels are shown.

Edinger was able to prove two protuberances on the cast of the brain of a fossil bat , as they also occur in bats living today. The ultrasonic echoes that bats use to orient themselves in the dark are processed in these structures . It can therefore be assumed that echolocation was already developed in this early bat . She also examined the brains of nothosaurs and was the first to understand the course of evolution in these brains. Paleontological research in this area is still based on the fundamental findings of Tilly Edinger.

Memberships

• 1921 German Geological Society

honors and awards

Tilly-Edinger-Platz in Frankfurt am Main

• In 1953 Edinger was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

• In 1962 she became an honorary member of the Paleontological Society .

• In memory of young scientists under 35 years of age, the Palaeontological Society has been awarding the Tilly Edinger Prize endowed with 2,500 euros for special research achievements in paleontology since 2004 .

• The Nothosaurus species Nothosaurus edingerae is named after her.

• In the Frankfurt district of Bockenheim not far from the Senckenberg Museum, "Tilly-Edinger-Platz" has been named after her since 2014.

Fonts

• About Nothosaurus. Dissertation University of Frankfurt a. M., 74 pp., 16 ill., Frankfurt a. M. 1921
• About Nothosaurus. I. A stone core of the cranial cavity. In: Senckenbergiana. Volume 3 for 1920, pp. 121-129, Frankfurt a. M. 1921
• About Nothosaurus. II. On the palate. In: Senckenbergiana. Volume 3 for 1920, pp. 193-205, Frankfurt a. M. 1921
• About Nothosaurus. III. A skull find in the Keuper. In: Senckenbergiana. Volume 4 for 1921, pp. 37-42, Frankfurt a. M. 1922
• The Placodontier . 2. The central nervous system of Placodus gigas Ag. In: Treatises of the Senckenbergische Naturforschenden Gesellschaft, Vol. 38, Issue 4, Frankfurt am Main 1925, Taf. XXIV, pp. 311-318

literature

• Rolf Kohring, Gerald Kreft (Eds.): Tilly Edinger. Life and work of a Jewish scientist . E. Schweizerbart'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-510-61351-1 , ( Senckenberg book 76).

Web links

• Literature by and about Tilly Edinger in the catalog of the German National Library
• Edinger, Tilly. Hessian biography. (As of February 13, 2013). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
• Harriet Freidenreich: Tilly Edinger. In: The Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. Jewish Women's Archive , February 27, 2009 (English). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kreft, Gerald: "Unnamed and unknown. Anna Edinger (1863-1929): Universitätsstifterin - Frauenrechtlerin - Deutsche Jüdin", in: Research Frankfurt 1/2006: pp. 85-89, http: //www.forschung-frankfurt. uni-frankfurt.de/36050500/86-90-edinger.pdf (accessed on August 29, 2018)
2. ↑ Edinger, Anna. Hessian biography. (As of March 15, 2011). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
3. ↑ Grave of the Edinger family in the Frankfurt main cemetery (Gewann II, grave GG 21, location , pictures )
4. ↑ Grave map to grave II GG 21. In: files of the main cemetery Frankfurt
5. ^ Members of the American Academy. Listed by election year, 1950-1999 ( [1] ). Retrieved September 23, 2015
6. ↑ H.-P. Schultze: About Nothosaurus. New description of a skull from the Keuper. In: Senckenbergiana lethaea. Volume 51, Frankfurt am Main 1970, pp. 211-237
7. ↑ Olivier Rieppel & Rupert Wild: Nothosaurus edingerae SCHULTZE, 1970: Diagnosis of the Species and Comments on its Stratigraphical Occurence. In: Stuttgart contributions to natural history. B 204: 13 pp., 5 figs .; Stuttgart 1994