Ludwig und Tilly Edinger

Ludwig und Tilly Edinger marks a place in Frankfurt’s history of science, linking neurology with paleontology. Ludwig Edinger worked as a neurologist in Frankfurt. He helped establish the University of Frankfurt and became Germany’s first professor of neurology. His research helped shape neurology as a distinct medical discipline. Tilly Edinger followed a different path through paleontology and became a pioneer of paleoneurology. She studied fossil brains and neural evolution across geological time. Her research relied on endocasts, natural casts that preserve the shape of brain cavities. These casts helped her infer brain structures in extinct vertebrates. Born in Frankfurt, Tilly earned her doctorate there before curating fossil vertebrates at the Senckenberg Museum. Her scientific work continued in England and at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. She connected geological evidence with questions about how brains evolved. The Edinger name therefore joins Frankfurt’s medical history to research on extinct animals.