List of notable or famous botanists from Italy, with bios and photos, including the top botanists born in Italy and even some popular botanists who immigrated to Italy. If you're trying to find out the names of famous Italian botanists then this list is the perfect resource for you. These botanists are among the most prominent in their field, and information about each well-known botanist from Italy is included when available.
The list you're viewing is made up of a variety of different people, including Leonardo da Vinci and Stefano Delle Chiaje.
This historic botanists from Italy list can help answer the questions "Who are some Italian botanists of note?" and "Who are the most famous botanists from Italy?" These prominent botanists of Italy may or may not be currently alive, but what they all have in common is that they're all respected Italian botanists.
Use this list of renowned Italian botanists to discover some new botanists that you aren't familiar with. Don't forget to share this list by clicking one of the social media icons at the top or bottom of the page. {#nodes}
Andrea Cesalpino (Latinized as Andreas Cæsalpinus) (6 June 1519 – 23 February 1603) was an Italian physician, philosopher and botanist.In his works he classified plants according to their fruits and seeds, rather than alphabetically or by medicinal properties. In 1555, he succeeded Luca Ghini as director of the botanical garden in Pisa. The botanist Pietro Castelli was one of his students. Cesalpino also did limited work in the field of physiology. He theorized a circulation of the blood. However, he envisioned a "chemical circulation" consisting of repeated evaporation and condensation of blood, rather than the concept of "physical circulation" popularized by the writings of William Harvey (1578–1657).
Antonio Musa Brassavola (variously spelled Brasavoli, Brasavola, or Brasavoli; 16 January 1500 – 1555) was an Italian physician and one of the most famous of his time. He studied under Niccolò Leoniceno and Giovanni Manardo. He was the friend and physician of Ercole II, the duke of Este. He was also the consulting physician of Kings Francis I, Charles V, Henry VIII and Popes Paul III, Leo X, Clement VIII and Julius III. He performed the first successful tracheotomy, and published an account of it in 1546. He was the chair of philosophy in Ferrara and also studied botany and medicine. A genus of orchid, called Brassavola, is named after him.
Carlo Allioni (23 September 1728 in Turin – 30 July 1804 in Turin) was an Italian physician and professor of botany at the University of Turin. His most important work was Flora Pedemontana, sive enumeratio methodica stirpium indigenarum Pedemontii 1755, a study of the plant world in Piedmont, in which he listed 2813 species of plants, of which 237 were previously unknown. In 1766, he published the Manipulus Insectorum Tauriniensium.
In April, 1758 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.He was appointed extraordinary professor of botany at the University of Turin in 1760 and was also the director of the Turin Botanical Garden. The journal Allionia: bollettino dell' istituto ed orto botanico dell' università di Torino is named after him.First Pehr Löfling and then Linnaeus named the New World herb genus Allionia (Nyctaginaceae) after Allioni. Per Axel Rydberg named the genus Allioniella (now Mirabilis), after him. Also named after him are:
Arabis allionii
Jovibarba allioni
Primula allioni
Veronica allionii
Giacomo Bresadola (Mezzana, Trento; often given as Giacopo) 14 February 1847 – Trento 9 June 1929) was an eminent Italian mycologist. Fungi he named include the deadly Lepiota helveola and Inocybe patouillardii, though the latter is now known as Inocybe erubescens as this latter description predated Bresadola's by a year. He was a founding member of the Société mycologique de France (Mycology Society of France).
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath, painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. His genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination". According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote". Marco Rosci states that while there is much speculation about Leonardo, his vision of the world is essentially logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for his time.
Born out of wedlock to a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, in Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter Verrocchio.
Luca Ghini (Casalfiumanese, 1490 – Bologna, May 4, 1556) was an Italian physician and botanist, notable as the creator of the first recorded herbarium, as well as the first botanical garden in Europe.
