Heilprin, Angelo (1853–1907)

Hungarian-born US geologist, palaeontologist, traveller, and explorer. He accompanied Robert Peary on his Arctic expedition of 1891. In 1902 he photographed the Mont Pelée volcano at close range while it was erupting. He wrote numerous books, including Principles of Geology (1890), The Earth and Its Story (1896), and Mont Pelée and the Tragedy of Martinique (1903). A talented painter, he illustrated some of his own works. On a 1906 expedition up the Orinoco River in British Guiana, he contracted a tropical disease, and he died of a heart problem the following year.

The son of Michael Heilprin, he was born in Satoralja-Ujhely, Hungary, and emigrated with his family to the USA in 1856, returning to Europe for his college and university education. From 1880–1900 he held a series of professorships, curatorships, and club presidencies in Philadelphia scientific institutions. From 1903–07 he was a professor of geography at Yale University.