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Angelo Heilprin (March 31, 1853 – July 17, 1907) was an American geologist, paleontologist, natural history, and explorer.
He is mostly known for the part he took into the Peary expedition to Greenland of 1891–1892 and for his observations and photographs of the 1902 eruption of Montagne Pelée in Martinique.
He also was a mountaineer and a painter.
He went back to Europe in 1876 for two years to complete his education. He studied at the Royal School of Mines, London,"The best man in my class" wrote Thomas Henry Huxley to Henry Newell Martin of Johns Hopkins University. Heilprin might have accepted a fellowship there but the letter informing him of the possibility never reached him. Pollak, p. 239 at the Imperial Geological Institution of Vienna, and at Florence (where he had his only formal training in painting) and Geneva; he also went to Hungary, where he mountaineered in the Carpathians, and to Poland where he visited family for six months.Pollak, page 238
He then became professor of invertebrate paleontology and of geology at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia (1880–1900), curator of the museum of that institution (1883–1892), professor of geology at the Wagner Free Institute of Science in Philadelphia (1885–1890); and he was the first president of the Geographical Society of Philadelphia, serving for seven years. In 1883, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society.
Also a painter, Heilprin exhibited Autumn's First Whisper at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1880, and Forest Exiles at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1883.
In 1902 he founded the American Alpine Club.
In 1904, he was appointed as a lecturer at Yale University.
In 1886, Heilprin undertook an expedition to the then little-known west coast of Florida.He coined the now-obsolete term of "Floridian" designating a period of the middle Pliocene. "Floridian", in Moureau, Magdeleine and Brace, Gerald, . Ophrys, 2000
In 1887 he went to the Bermudas with members of his classes to study , confirming Charles Darwin's 1842 views expressed in The structure and distribution of coral reefs.Pollak, p. 259
In 1888, Heilprin was in Mexico, where he ascended volcanos: Ixtaccihuatl, Nevado de Toluca, Pico de Orizaba and Popocatepetl, establishing their altitudes with barometer measures. He also shed light on questions about the geology of the Yucatan and the coral reefs of the western Gulf of Mexico.The results of that research trip to Mexico (and that of 1906) were never published. They can however be found in the proceedings of the Academy and in Heilprin's papers. Excerpts can be found in Pollak, pp. 260–263.
En 1891 Heilprin embarked with Robert Peary on an expedition to Greenland organized by the Academy of Natural Sciences. Peary was the leader of the north-bound expedition, which was to prove that Greenland is an island. Heilprin headed the "Western Expedition" comprising half a dozen scientists.There also was a reporter of the New York Herald. The scientists collected data then returned to the U.S., while Peary remained in Greenland.Pollak, But the next year Heilprin was back to Greenland, leading the "Peary relief expedition". Description of the Heilprin documents of the expedition
In 1902, when Montagne Pelée in Martinique erupted,08-05-1902 reducing the city of Saint-Pierre to ashes, Heilprin was one of the first scientists to arrive to the site. His works, photographs and eyewitness account of the phenomena and their consequences are unique. He was the first geologist to ascend a side of the crater.31-05-1902 and 01-06-1902. He revisited it in 1903 and in February 1906 descended into the crater itself.
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