Lazzaro Spallanzani

Lazzaro Spallanzani ( born January 12, 1729 Scandiano, today Reggio Emilia Province; † February 12, 1799 in Pavia ) was an Italian priest, philosopher and universal scientist.

Life

Spallanzani was initially trained by his father, a lawyer. At 15, he was sent to a Jesuit school in Reggio Emilia and invited to join the Order. However, he went to the University of Bologna, where his relatives Laura Bassi was a professor of physics; usually its scientific impetus has been attributed to their influence. With Bassi he studied natural philosophy and mathematics; he devoted himself to both ancient and modern languages, but soon gave up the study of law, and entered the Order. At the age of 25, he became a doctor of philosophy.

His reputation soon grew, and in 1754 he became professor of logic, metaphysics, and Greek at the University of Reggio. In 1762 he was ordained a priest. A year later he was appointed to Modena, where he taught with great diligence and with great success at the university, he devoted all his leisure time in natural science. He refused many offers from other Italian universities and from St Petersburg until he accepted the offer of Maria Theresa in 1768 to the chair of Natural History at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Pavia.

At the same time, he also became director of the Natural History Museum in Pavia, which he enriched with his collections from many trips along the Mediterranean coasts. In addition to his lectures and his scientific experiments he read in his capacity as a priest still daily Holy Mass. In 1785 he was invited to Padua, but his sovereign doubled his salary to keep him, and allowed him a visit in the Ottoman Empire. He remained there for almost a year and he made many observations, including a copper mine in Halki and an iron mine in Principi. His return home was almost like a triumphal procession: in Vienna, he was warmly received by Joseph II, and when he reached Pavia, he was greeted outside the city gates of the students of the university with applause. During the following year the number of his students exceeded 500 His integrity in the management of the museum has been questioned, but a judicial investigation, even to the satisfaction of his accusers, his honor restored.

In 1788 he visited Vesuvius, the volcano on the Lipari Islands and Sicily. He presented the results of this research in his great work Viaggi all due Sicilie ed is in alcune parti dell'Appennino, which was published four years later. Death met him through a stroke.

His tireless efforts as a traveler, his skill and luck as a collector, his talent as a teacher and commentator, and his passion in controversy undoubtedly contributed significantly to to justify the extraordinary fame Spallanzani among his contemporaries; However, he lacked no way to greater qualities. His life was marked by unrelenting zeal to question the nature in every way, and his many and varied works all bear the stamp of an original genius, able to present problems in all branches of science and to solve. So he helped, among other things, to lay the foundations of modern volcanology and meteorology.

His most important discoveries lie in the field of physiology: he wrote valuable treatises on breathing, on the sense organs of bats, etc., while he made experiments ( 1768), to refute the occurrence of spontaneous generation by unlike John Turberville Needham (1713-1781) demonstrated that microbes can not occur in organic liquids when they are boiled and stored in airtight containers. His most famous work is Dissertazioni di fisica animale e vegetal ( 2 volumes, 1780). In it, he indicated for the first time the digestive process; he shows that this is not a purely mechanical process for shredding, but a chemical and primarily preceded by the action of gastric juice. He also performed important research on the fertilization of animals by ( 1780). In 1768 he discovered the regenerative power of salamanders in terms of torn-off limbs.

E. T. A. Hoffmann was fascinated by these researches. He lets the figure Spallanzani occur several times ( in the less usual notation Spallanzani ).

The lunar crater Spallanzani and Mars crater Spallanzani are named after him.

Works

• Dissertazioni di fisica animale e vegetal (1780 )
• Viaggi all due Sicilie ed in alcune parti dell ' Appenino (1792 )
• De lapidibus from aqua resilentibus (~ 1750)