Scientists Italy
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian humanist scholar, writer and poet of the Early Renaissance.
Boccaccio was the son of a Tuscan merchant who sent him to Naples to study business and law. Giovanni revolved in aristocratic circles there and became acquainted with Petrarch's work. In Naples he wrote his first works of poetry, raising the poetry of Italian minstrelsy to literature. Returning to Florence in 1341, Boccaccio, in addition to the famous book of witty short stories "Decameron" (1348-1353), created many poems, allegories and prose works.
In 1350 at Bocaccio's house in Florence, he met Petrarch, which developed into a friendship. In the last years of his life he concentrated on scholarly works in Latin, including writing De montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus..., - this alphabetical list of mountains, forests, rivers and lakes was based on the writings of ancient poets. His other Latin works include the philosophical and historical De claris mulieribus (a collection of biographies of famous women, 1360-74) and De casibus virorum illustrium (On the Fates of Famous Men, 1355-74).
Giovanni Boccaccio had a significant influence on the development of all European culture through his work. Together with Petrarch, he laid the foundations of Renaissance humanism and raised popular literature to the level and status of the ancient classics.
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known as Boethius (Latin: Boetius), was an Italian senator, consul, magister officiorum, historian, and philosopher of the Early Middle Ages. He was a central figure in the translation of the Greek classics into Latin, a precursor to the Scholastic movement, and, along with Cassiodorus, one of the two leading Christian scholars of the 6th century.
Filippo Bonanni or Buonanni was an Italian Jesuit scholar. His many works included treatises on fields ranging from anatomy to music. He created the earliest practical illustrated guide for shell collectors in 1681, for which he is considered a founder of conchology. He also published a study of lacquer that has been of lasting value since his death.
Giovanni Alfonso Borelli was an Italian universalist scientist of the 17th century Scientific Revolution, the founder of biomechanics.
He studied mathematics under Benedetto Castelli (1577-1644) in Rome. In the 1640s Borelli was appointed to the chair of mathematics at the University of Messina and at Pisa in 1656. After 12 years at Pisa and numerous disputes with colleagues, Borelli left the university. In 1667 Borelli returned to the University of Messina, where he engaged in literary and historical studies, studied the eruption of the volcano Etna, and continued to work on the problem of muscular movement of animals and other bodily functions according to the laws of statics and dynamics. In 1674 he was accused of participating in a conspiracy to liberate Sicily from Spain and fled to Rome.
Borelli is known primarily for his attempts to explain muscular movement and other bodily functions according to the laws of statics and dynamics. His best-known work is De Motu Animalium (1680-81; "On the Motion of Animals"). Borelli calculated the forces required for balance in the various joints of the human body, long before Newton published his Laws of Motion. Borelli was the first to realize that musculoskeletal levers increase motion, not force, so muscles must produce much greater forces than those that resist motion. He was also one of the first microscopists: he made microscopic studies of blood circulation, nematodes, textile fibers, and spider eggs. Borelli also authored works on physics, medicine, astronomy, geology, mathematics, and mechanics.
Giovanni Battista Brocchi was an Italian mineralogist, geologist and paleontologist.
Brocchi studied law at the University of Padua, but was seriously interested in natural sciences and mineralogy. In 1802, Brocchi became a teacher of natural history at the Brescia Gymnasium. Appointment in 1808 as inspector of mines in Milan gave him the opportunity to travel extensively in Italy, making extensive notes and collecting numerous samples. The fruits of these labors appeared in various publications, notably his "Treatise mineralogical and chemical on the iron mines of the department of Mella" (1808). He then obtained a position as inspector of mining in the newly created kingdom of Italy.
In 1811 Brocchi wrote a valuable essay entitled "Mineralogical Memoirs on the Fassa Valley in the Tyrol." He made his first extensive exploration of central Italy in 1811-1812, witnessed the eruption of Vesuvius, and was able to compare the condition of its crater before and after the eruption. But his most important work is Fossils of the Sub-Apennines with geological observations on the Apennines and adjacent soil (1814), which contains precise details of the structure of the Apennine ridge and an account of the fossilization of Italian Tertiary strata in comparison with existing species. Brocchi also wrote several significant works on biology.
In the fall of 1822 he sailed from Trieste to Egypt, whence he made excursions up the Nile and into Syria and Palestine. In 1826 he contracted the bubonic plague, of which he died. His last journals and collections are preserved at the Museo Civico in Bassano. In all, Brocchi published five voluminous books and about seventy articles in various journals.
Bonaventura Francesco Cavalieri (Latin: Bonaventura Cavalerius) was an Italian mathematician and a Jesuate. He is known for his work on the problems of optics and motion, work on indivisibles, the precursors of infinitesimal calculus, and the introduction of logarithms to Italy. Cavalieri's principle in geometry partially anticipated integral calculus.
Lucius Iunius Moderatus Columella was an ancient Roman author of books on agriculture.
As a young man he was a soldier and tribune in the Roman army, but then devoted himself entirely to farming in Italy. Fully extant are De re rustica in 12 books, Columella's second and more complete study of farming and village life, and De arboribus ("On Trees"), which was part of an earlier work. Both books are written in a clear, non-academic style, the author clearly trying to instill in the reader a love of farming and the simple life.
Columella in his writings sometimes quotes from the works of Cato the Elder and Marcus Terentius Varrone, which all together provide an important source of knowledge about life at the time. The book On Farming, published in 1745, is an English translation of Columella's De re rustica and De arboribus.
Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance, celebrated as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. His remarkable abilities and innovative thinking made him an epitome of the Renaissance humanist ideal. Born in Vinci, near Florence, in 1452, Leonardo was educated in Florence by Andrea del Verrocchio, a renowned painter and sculptor. He began his career in Florence, later working in Milan, Rome, and France, where he died in 1519.
Da Vinci is revered for his artistic mastery, technological innovation, and scientific inquiry. Despite having fewer than 25 major works attributed to him, including several unfinished ones, his influence on Western art is profound. His magnum opus, the "Mona Lisa," housed in the Louvre Museum, Paris, is considered the world's most famous painting. "The Last Supper," his most reproduced religious painting, showcases his mastery of dramatic narrative and pictorial illusionism. Both paintings exhibit Leonardo's unique ability to convey complex human emotions and his innovative use of techniques like sfumato and chiaroscuro.
Leonardo's interests extended far beyond fine art. He was a visionary in multiple fields, including anatomy, physics, architecture, and mechanics. His notebooks reveal designs for machines like bicycles, helicopters, and military tanks, centuries ahead of their time. However, due to his diverse interests, he left many projects and paintings incomplete. Leonardo's final years were spent in France, where he continued his artistic and scientific pursuits until his death.
For collectors and experts in art and antiques, Leonardo da Vinci remains a figure of endless fascination. His works not only embody the pinnacle of Renaissance art but also provide insights into the era's scientific and philosophical inquiry. To stay updated on new sales and auction events related to Leonardo da Vinci, sign up for our newsletter. This subscription is a gateway to exploring the rich legacy of this unparalleled artist and inventor.
Francesco de Bourcard was a Swiss-born Italian scholar, historian and publisher.
De Bourcard devoted about twenty years, from 1847 to 1866, to the production of a voluminous work, The Uses and Customs of Naples, to which he engaged a large number of contributors, both writers, artists, and engravers.
The first of the two volumes was published in 1853. The books depict the customs of the time, the typical characters of the people, their daily lives, and a wide range of popular and religious festivals. Hundreds of lithographs are accompanied by explanatory texts.
Girolamo Fabrici d'Acquapendente, also known as Girolamo Fabrizio or Hieronymus Fabricius, was an Italian anatomist and surgeon and the founder of embryology. The Latinised form of his name, under which his works can be found, is Hieronymus Fabricius (ab Aquapendente).
Gabriele Falloppio was an Italian physician and anatomist of the Renaissance.
Originally a priest, Falloppio soon left for Ferrara to study medicine and was later appointed anatomy professor there, and in 1548 he became head of the anatomy department at Pisa. Three years later he accepted the offer of the Venetian Senate to become professor of anatomy, surgery, and botany at Padua, where he remained for the rest of his life. It was in this city that he made his most famous discoveries, was director of the famous botanical garden, and wrote two medical textbooks.
He also gained a reputation as an excellent teacher and lecturer, attracting many Italian and foreign students to the medical faculty of the University of Padua. As a physician, he made a thorough study of the clinical aspects and treatment of syphilis, and proposed the condom as a defense against venereal disease.
Falloppio was a versatile scientist and an able physician and surgeon, describing, among other things, the semicircular canals, the cuneiform sinuses, the trigeminal, auditory and lingual pharyngeal nerves, the canal of the facial nerve, and the fallopian tubes, named Fallopian tubes in his honor. Falloppio described his discoveries in his three-volume work Opera genuina omnia, published in Frankfurt in 1600 and in Venice in 1606.
Giovanni Battista Ferrari was an Italian Jesuit scholar, professor of Oriental languages and botanist.
Giovanni Ferrari had linguistic abilities and at the age of 21 knew Hebrew well, spoke and wrote Greek and Latin perfectly, and learned Syriac. He became professor of Hebrew and rhetoric at the Jesuit College in Rome and edited a Syriac-Latin dictionary in 1622.
Ferrari always showed great interest in the systematics and classification of fruits. He was appointed head of the chair of Hebraistics at the College of Rome and held this position for 28 years. In 1623, Ferrari became horticultural advisor to the family of Pope Urban VIII at the Palazzo Barberini, which soon became famous for its rare plants, including orange trees. Ferrari later wrote the first book on citrus trees, equating them to the mythical golden apples of the Hesperides conquered by Hercules. Orange trees became an important element of Baroque gardens, symbolizing the rewards earned by the magnanimous prince. The scientist also described the medicinal properties of citrus fruits.
In 1633, the first treatise on floriculture, De florum cultura, was published. In it, Ferrari describes garden layout with contemporary examples, flower specimens and their cultivation, and general horticulture.
Galileo Galilei was an Italian naturalist, physicist, mechanic, astronomer, philosopher, and mathematician.
Using his own improved telescopes, Galileo Galilei observed the movements of the Moon, Earth's satellites, and the stars, making several breakthrough discoveries in astronomy. He was the first to see craters on the Moon, discovered sunspots and the rings of Saturn, and traced the phases of Venus. Galileo was a consistent and convinced supporter of the teachings of Copernicus and the heliocentric system of the world, for which he was subjected to the trial of the Inquisition.
Galileo is considered the founder of experimental and theoretical physics. He is also one of the founders of the principle of relativity in classical mechanics. Overall, the scientist had such a significant impact on the science of his time that he cannot be overemphasized.
Athanasius Kircher was a German scholar, inventor, professor of mathematics and oriental studies, and a friar of the Jesuit order.
Kircher knew Greek and Hebrew, did scientific and humanities research in Germany, and was ordained in Mainz in 1628. During the Thirty Years' War he was forced to flee to Rome, where he remained for most of his life, serving as a kind of intellectual and information center for cultural and scientific information drawn not only from European sources but also from an extensive network of Jesuit missionaries. He was particularly interested in ancient Egypt and attempted to decipher hieroglyphics and other riddles. Kircher also compiled A Description of the Chinese Empire (1667), which was long one of the most influential books that shaped the European view of China.
A renowned polymath, Kircher conducted scholarly research in a variety of disciplines, including geography, astronomy, mathematics, languages, medicine, and music. He wrote some 44 books, and more than 2,000 of his manuscripts and letters have survived. He also assembled one of the first natural history collections.
Fortunio Liceti (Latin: Fortunius Licetus) was an Italian physician, natural philosopher, writer and educator.
Liceti studied philosophy and medicine at the University of Bologna and earned doctorates in these disciplines. He taught logic and philosophy at the University of Pisa, and became professor of philosophy at the University of Padua and the University of Bologna. At the University of Padua, Liceti became friends with Galileo Galilei.
Liceti's inquisitive mind was interested in a wide range of subjects: from genetics and reproduction to gems and animals. In general, Fortunio Liceti was a very industrious and prolific scientist: he published a book each year, writing more than seventy works on a wide range of subjects, including the human soul, reproduction, and birth defects.
In 1616, Liceti wrote and published the first edition of De monstruorum causis, natura et differentiis (On the Causes, Nature, and Differences of Monsters), a chronologically ordered catalog of monsters from antiquity to the seventeenth century. Among these monsters were infants with congenital malformations. Liceti was one of the first scholars to attempt to systematically categorize birth defects according to their causes, including numerous causes not related to the supernatural. This topic interested the scientist greatly and he returned to it several times during his life, supplementing it with illustrations, among other things. From 1640 to 1650. Liceti also wrote and published seven different volumes in which he answered questions from famous people on a wide variety of medical topics.
Marcello Malpighi was an Italian biologist, anatomist and physician, professor of logic, theoretical and practical medicine, and a member of the Royal Society of London.
After graduating from the University of Bologna with the degree of Doctor of Medicine and Philosophy, Malpighi soon took up a professorship there, then taught at the universities of Pisa and Messina. At the same time as teaching, he conducted biological research with his microscopes, which was an innovation in those days. In 1661, he identified and described the pulmonary and capillary network connecting small arteries to small veins, one of the most important discoveries in the history of science. He also isolated taste buds and regarded them as nerve endings, described the minute structure of the brain, the optic nerve, and in 1666 was the first to see red blood cells and attribute to them the color of blood. His treatise De polypo cordis (1666) explained the composition of blood and how it coagulates.
During his medical practice, Malpighi studied microscopic sections of the liver, brain, spleen, kidneys, and the bone and deep layers of skin that now bear his name. In his landmark 1673 work on the embryology of the chicken, the scientist concluded that the embryo forms in the egg after fertilization. In 1675-79 he also made extensive comparative studies of the microscopic anatomy of several different plants and saw analogies between plant and animal organisms. The Royal Society of London published two volumes of his botanical and zoological works in 1675 and 1679. His Anatome Plantarum is richly decorated with engravings by Robert White.
After his house was burned and looted by his adversaries, in 1691 Pope Innocent XII invited him to Rome as papal personal physician, which was a great honor.
Malpighi can be considered the first histologist. For almost 40 years he used the microscope to describe the main types of plant and animal structures and thus marked for future generations of biologists the main directions of research in botany, embryology, human anatomy and pathology. The conflict between ancient ideas and modern discoveries continued throughout the seventeenth century. Malpighi was convinced that microscopic anatomy, by showing the minute structure of living things, questioned the value of the old medicine. He laid the anatomical foundation for the subsequent understanding of human physiological exchanges.
Pietro Andrea Gregorio Mattioli was a 16th-century Italian physician, botanist and pharmacist.
Mattioli studied medicine in Padua and obtained a medical practice first in his hometown. Later, in the 1555-1560s, he served as personal physician to the imperial court of Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria, and Emperor Maximilian II. This high position allowed him to test the effects of poisonous plants on prisoners for scientific purposes.
Mattioli published several scientific works in which he included many of his own observations on the flora of the Alps, including previously unexplored plants. These works, based on the study of books by predecessor scientists, gave impetus to the development of botany throughout Italy at the time. Mattioli kept up a lively correspondence with other researchers, describing specimens of rare plants received from them. The genus of flowering plants Matthiola is named after Mattioli.
Georgius Merula, also Giorgio Merlani di Negro or Georgius Merula Alexandrinus, was an Italian humanist scholar, philosopher, philologist and historian of the Renaissance.
He held the position of professor and taught in Milan and Venice. But became known for being the first to print the works of Plautus (1472), Scriptores rei rusticae, Cato, Varron, Columella, and Palladius (1472). He also published commentaries on parts of Cicero (especially De finibus), Ausonius, Juvenal, Curtius Rufus, and other classical authors. Merula also labored in historical research and described several significant battles.
Taurus Palladius, full name Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus Palladius, more commonly simply Palladius, was an ancient Roman author of scientific books on agriculture.
This wealthy landowner had a classical education and personally managed his estates in southern Italy and Sardinia. He passed on his wealth of experience to his descendants. Palladius' voluminous work on agriculture in 15 books, De re rustica libri XIV, has survived to our time. The author begins with general instructions and prescriptions on methods of determining the suitability of the soil and descriptions of various agricultural buildings, and each building is devoted to a separate chapter. The next 12 books give a detailed enumeration of rural work (including viticulture, olive and honey harvesting, olive oil and wine making, and repairing buildings), organized by the months of the year when it should be carried out in order to obtain a good harvest.
Giuseppe Piazzi was an Italian astronomer, mathematician and priest.
Around 1764 Piazzi became a Theatine priest, in 1779 he was appointed professor of theology in Rome, and in 1780 - professor of higher mathematics at the Academy of Palermo. Later, with the assistance of the Viceroy of Sicily, he founded an observatory in Palermo. There he compiled his great catalog of the positions of 7,646 stars and showed that most stars move relative to the Sun. There, on January 1, 1801, Piazzi also discovered the asteroid Ceres.
Giuseppe Piazzi's merits were appreciated: he was a member of the Royal Society of London, a foreign honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and a foreign member of the Paris Academy of Sciences. A crater on the Moon is named in his honor.
Paolo Ricci (Italian: Paolo Ricci, Latin: Paulus Ricius, German: Paul Ritz), also known as Ritz, Riccio, or Paulus Israelita, was a humanist convert from Judaism, a writer-theologian, Kabbalist, and physician.
After his baptism in 1505 he published his first work, Sol Federis, in which he affirmed his new faith and sought through Kabbalah to refute modern Judaism. In 1506 he moved to Pavia, Italy, where he became a lecturer in philosophy and medicine at the university and met Erasmus of Rotterdam. Ricci was also a learned astrologer, a professor of Hebrew, philosophy, theology, and Kabbalah, a profound connoisseur and translator of sacred texts into Latin and Hebrew, and the author of philosophical and theological works.
Paolo Ricci was a very prolific writer. His Latin translations, especially the translation of the Kabalistic work Shaare Orach, formed the basis of the Christian Kabbalah of the early 16th century.
Celio Rodigino (Latin: Caelius Rhodiginus), real name Ludovico Ricchieri, was an Italian writer, educator and Renaissance humanist.
Rodigino studied in Ferrara and Padua, and then was professor of Greek and Latin at Rovigo. In 1515 he became chair of Greek at the University of Milan.
His principal work was Antiquarum Lectionum in sixteen books, published in Venice in 1516. In this work Rodigino collected a considerable number of short essays and notes on Latin and Greek antiquity, from literature, philology, and science to philosophy, history, anthropology, and morality, as well as reflections on ancient music. He also wrote commentaries on Virgil, Ovid, and Horace.
Michele Rosa was an Italian chemist and professor.
Rosa graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Bologna, then practiced in Venice and Rome. In 1766 he published An Essay on Clinical Observations, a pioneering work that brought him fame and earned him a professorship at the University of Pavia. In 1782 Rosa was appointed professor of practical medicine and president of the medical faculty of the new University of Modena. At Este he was elected president of the medical college and was in charge of sanitation.
In 1783 he published Letters on some physiological curiosities. In addition to physiology, epidemiology and public hygiene, Michele Rosa wrote works on natural science, antiquarianism and dietetics. Among these are the memoirs On Pores and Substances in Antiquity (1786) and On Gianda and Quercia (1801). In 1796 Rosa returned to Rimini, where he continued to teach and held some public offices.
Carlo Scarpa was an Italian architect, influenced by the materials, landscape and the history of Venetian culture, and by Japan. Scarpa translated his interests in history, regionalism, invention, and the techniques of the artist and craftsman into ingenious glass and furniture design.
Marco Aurelio Severino was an Italian surgeon, anatomist and zoologist, one of the founders of comparative anatomy.
From childhood Severino studied Latin, Greek, rhetoric, poetry and law in various schools in Calabria, then continued his studies in Naples, soon moving from law to medicine. In Naples he met Tommaso Campanella, who had a great influence on the formation of his worldview. After receiving a medical degree in Salerno in 1606, he studied surgery in Naples with Giulio Jasolino. In 1615 Severino was appointed the first surgeon at Ospedale degli Incurabili. Severino made significant contributions to the transformation of naturophilosophy, medical and surgical practice, to which much of his printed work is devoted.
Severino's main contribution, however, lies in his anatomical works, especially the Zootomia Democritea. This work may be called the earliest comprehensive treatise on comparative anatomy. Severino is considered one of the pioneers of comparative anatomy.
Severino's cultural interests extended far beyond medicine. He corresponded with many prominent physicians and scientists of his time, including William Harvey and John Houghton in England, Thomas Bartolin and Ole Worm in Denmark, J.G. Volkamer and Johannes Wesling in Germany, and Campanella, Jasolino, and Tommaso Cornelio in Italy. Severino was tried by the Inquisition for allegedly unorthodox religious and philosophical views, but was eventually acquitted. He died of the plague in Naples.
Francesco Valentini, full name Francesco Cosma Damiano Valentini, was an Italian linguistic scholar, teacher and translator who worked in Germany.
Valentini held a doctorate and was the Royal Prussian Professor of Italian Language and Literature in Berlin. From 1831 to 1836, he published an Italian-German dictionary in four volumes in Leipzig.
One day Valentini was invited to give a lecture on the theater and carnival masks of his native Rome. The lecture was such a success that it was later published in 1826 by the Berlin art dealer and publisher Wittich, who illustrated it with charming color engravings based on drawings by the Berlin artist Johann Heinrich Stürmer. The book was published in German and Italian.
Antonio Vallisneri the Elder was an Italian naturalist, physician and geologist, collector, and member of the Royal Society of London.
He studied in Bologna, Venice, Padua and Parma and headed the chair first of practical medicine and then of theoretical medicine at the University of Padua. In addition to medicine, Vallisneri conducted important research in the natural sciences. In particular, in the field of geology, he is credited with recognizing the organic nature of fossils unrelated to the Great Flood, which contributed to the end of centuries-old disputes. His observations on the water cycle, thermal waters and some mines in the Apennines were also important.
Vallisneri was interested in all branches of the natural sciences, collecting numerous collections of animals, minerals, and other natural objects during his lifetime. The scientist compiled a brief catalog of his collection, which was published in 1733 by his son, Antonio Vallisneri, Jr. The Vallisneri Museum included naturalistic finds, anatomical preparations, medical and scientific instruments, antiques, and exotics from various cultures and eras as well as geographical origins. In 1734, his son donated this museum to the University of Padua, initiating the creation of a general museum for the university.
Antonio Vallisneri Jr. followed in his father's footsteps and for many years held the position of professor of natural history at the University of Padua. He devoted his life to collecting and processing his father's writings and tidying up his library, which contained about a thousand volumes. These were donated to the University Library in Padua.
Marcus Terentius Varrō, sometimes called Varro of Reatinus, was an ancient Roman scholar-encyclopedist and writer.
Varro was a very prolific writer: the titles of his 74 works are known, totaling 620 books. Varron was engaged in logic, language, poetry, history, law and geography, history, art, history of literature, theory of music. Judging by the surviving accounts of his contemporaries, the most significant of Varron's lost works were "Divine and Human Antiquities" (Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum) in 41 books and "Portraits" (Imagines) in 15 books, which contained biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, as well as 700 portraits that illustrated the text. The treatise "On Agriculture" (De re rustica) in three books has survived in complete preservation.