Who?
Gerhard Heilmann (1859-1946) was a Danish illustrator, painter and porcelain worker who, until 1912, had followed a rather typical artist's career. After that year, however, he chose to devote part of his attention to evolutionary issues, and in particular to the origin of flight and that of birds. This brought him into contact with the European palaeontological community, which at that time was heavily involved with this topic. Astonishingly, when the English translation of Heilmann's detailed study of the evolution of birds was published in 1926 (
The Origin of Birds), it proved to be a turning point for the discussion of this subject but also palaeontological methodology in general. It was exactly the artist's attention to minute graphical detail that set him aside from the 'typical' European palaeontologist's approach. This, and the inclusion of a range of scientific subdisciplines, made Heilmann's work the scientific standard for over forty years Turns out I've not been the only one interested in Heilmann.
The Danish historian Christopher Ries published an article recently in Archives of Natural History, which agrees with my thesis that the reason why Heilmann could become such an authority on bird evolution was that outside Denmark his amateur status was not that well-known. Of course, he was much more thorough than I ever was, so I enthusiastically recommend reading his work:
Ries, C. J. (2007). Creating the Proavis: bird origins in the art and science of Gerhard Heilmann 1913-1926. Archives of Natural History, 34(1), 1-19.
The Origin of Birds
Heilmann's most famous work was his 1926 book The Origin of Birds. Most of the artwork featured below stems from that work, or its Danish-language predecessor of 1916.
The Origin of Birds is still a seminal work in the history of palaeontology for a number of reasons: the defining influence it had in the debate on the origin of birds, the combination of text and illustration, and its strong and consistent argument. The first English-language edition appeared in London in 1926 (followed in 1927 by an American edition) and set the debate on avian origins for forty years, until new finds in the 1960s and changing views on the systematics behind evolution changed the consensus once more.
It is really a book that anyone interested in bird origins or the history of palaeontology ought to read; I scanned and OCR'ed it so that everyone can.
Further sources:
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