The Origin of Birds,[2] a pioneering and influential account of bird evolution. Heilmann lacked a formal training in science although he studied medicine briefly before shifting to art. His ideas on bird evolution were first written in Danish in the Dansk Ornitologisk Tidsskrift. Heilmann received little help and often got considerable opposition from Danish professional zoologists of the time and he in turn often made dismissive remarks on the ideas of some of the established scientists of the time. The English edition however reached out to a much larger audience and influenced ideas in bird evolution for nearly half a century.[1][3][4]
Life
A plate showing kestrels for Danmarks Fugle (1931)
Heilmann was born in
Skelskør, Denmark where his father was a pharmacist. He joined a polytechnic at Roskilde in 1877 but moved to study medicine. While studying medicine he became inclined towards art and considered becoming a professional. Against the wishes of his family, he quit his medicine studies in 1883 and became an apprentice painter of Franz Schwartz and later P S Krøyer. He joined Royal Copenhagen porcelain works in 1890 and worked there until 1902. He then worked as a free-lance artist, illustrating books. Some of his key works included illustrations in Schiøler's Danmarks Fugle (birds of Denmark), Jægeren i Naturen (1925) (Hunter in Nature), Danmarks Sangfugle 1926 (Denmark's songbirds), and a three-volume Danmarks Fugleliv (1926–1930). An ardent birdwatcher himself, he was one of the first members of the Danish Ornithological Society started in 1906. He designed the front cover of the society's journal. Some Danish banknotes were designed by him.[1][4][5]
His major work was however published as a series of short notes in Danish published in the journal Dansk Ornitologisk Forenings Tidsskrift between 1913 and 1916 and titled Vor nuværende Viden om Fuglenes Afstamning (Our present knowledge about the origin of birds). In 1926, he enlarged this and published it as an English book "The Origin of Birds". This was acclaimed for its bold ideas, depth of research and excellent illustration.[1] He was largely self-taught and essentially an amateur, he was largely disregarded locally by established academics. He however was not afraid of taking on the establishment and made his arguments clear.[3] Heilmann was considered a quarrelsome personality. He was brought up in a conservative religious family. In later life he rebelled against religion and in 1940 he wrote a book on Darwinism and devoted the last section to arguing against religious ideas (Univers og traditionen). This included a large section pointing out how angels could not have wings since they did not have the right chest musculature. Except for this part of the book, it was overall well received.[6]
In 1942 he changed the spelling of his name to "Heilman", however the older spelling predominates.[1]
The Origin of Birds
Main article:
The Origin of Birds (book)
pigeon
Heilmann published an English revision of his series of Danish papers in 1926 as The Origin of Birds.
Dollo's Law, which states that evolution is not reversible, Heilmann could not accept that clavicles were lost in dinosaurs and re-evolved in birds, so he was forced to rule out dinosaurs as bird ancestors and ascribe all of their similarities to convergence. Heilmann stated that bird ancestors would instead be found among the more primitive 'thecodont' grade of reptiles.[5] Heilmann's extremely thorough approach ensured that his book became a classic in the field and its conclusions on bird origins, as with most other topics, were accepted by nearly all evolutionary biologists for the next four decades,[7] despite the discovery of clavicles in the primitive theropod Segisaurus in 1936.[8] Clavicles and even fully developed furculae have since been identified in numerous other non-avian dinosaurs.[9][10]
In 1912 he contacted
D'Arcy Thompson by R. W. Shufeldt and this led to the two exchanging ideas on morphological evolution. His past bitter encounters with Danish academics led to Heilmann initially writing "I wonder why Dr. R.W. Shufeldt has written to you about my work; he ought to have told you, that I am an artist and only an incipient amateur in science. This is my first work in this line." In the course of his interactions with Thompson, he also contributed some illustrations for use in "On Growth and Form".[3]
In 1940, Heilmann published a second book on
Scansoriopteryx heilmanni
was named in honour of Gerhard Heilmann in 2002.
Notes
^ abcdeSalomonsen, Finn (1946). "Gerhard Heilman 25 June 1859 - 26 March 1946". Dansk Ornithologisk Forenings Tidsskrift (in Danish). 40: 146–149.
^Heilmann, Gerhard (1926). The Origin of Birds. London: Witherby.
^Camp, Charles L. (1936). "A new type of small theropod dinosaur from the Navajo Sandstone of Arizona". Bulletin of the University of California Department of Geological Sciences. 24: 39–65.
