Antonio Stoppani towards the end of his life
Antonio Stoppani (24 August 18241 January 1891)
was an Italian
Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
priest, patriot,
geologist
A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid, liquid, and gaseous matter that constitutes Earth and other terrestrial planets, as well as the processes that shape them. Geologists usually study geology, earth science, or geophysics, althou ...
and
palaeontologist
Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...
. He studied the geology of the Italian region and wrote a popular treatise, ''Il Bel Paese'' (Italian for "the beautiful country"), on geology and natural history. He was among the first to propose a geological epoch dominated by human activities that altered the shape of the land.
Life
Born in
Lecco, Stoppani studied theology and became a priest in the order of the
Rosminians
The Rosminians, officially named the Institute of Charity ( la, Institutum Caritatis), abbreviated I.C., are a Roman Catholic clerical religious congregation of Pontifical Right for men founded by Antonio Rosmini and first organised in 1828.
The ...
. He was ordained in 1848, a year of turmoil with the Siege of Milan. During this siege, the
Five Days of Milan, he became a hero for his role in the use of hot air balloons to send messages out of the besieged city. Along with Vincenzo Guglielmini, he ensured that the balloons could move over the walls of the city from the Seminario Maggiore di Porta Orientale and carry messages to rally the Italians against the Austrian Empire. He later became professor of geology in the Royal Technical Institute of
Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
, and was distinguished for his research on the
Triassic
The Triassic ( ) is a geologic period and system which spans 50.6 million years from the end of the Permian Period 251.902 million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Jurassic Period 201.36 Mya. The Triassic is the first and shortest period ...
and
Liassic formations of northern Italy.
![PlacaaAntonioStoppani-EsinoLario-Italia](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/PlacaaAntonioStoppani-EsinoLario-Italia.jpg)
Stoppani was important as a popularizer of science. His most popular work, ''Il Bel Paese, conversazioni sulle bellezze naturali la geologia e la geologia e la geografia fisica d'Italia'' (1876) ("The Beautiful country, conversation on the natural beauty of geology and the physical geography of Italy"), after which
Bel Paese cheese was named by
Egidio Galbani (the wrapper for the cheese included a portrait of Stoppani). It presents, by means of 32 didactic, scientific conversations supposedly in front of a fireplace, ideas and concepts from the natural sciences, in language accessible to the average 19th-century reader. It was so popular that it went into 120 editions by 1920 and was a textbook in schools. It deals especially with geological curiosities and the beauty of the Italian landscape. He commented on Italians who "know almost nothing about the natural beauty of our country; yet take delight when someone calls it a garden" and that the English fall in love with just one thing and devote their energies, emotions, and life to arrive dead or alive at the summit of mountains. His introduction to natural history declared that "''man should never disappear from nature, nor should nature disappear from man''". Stoppani, like many other clergyman naturalists of the period, was a supporter of the ''concordismo'', a school of thought that sought to find concordance between the teachings of the bible and evidence from geology. He promoted the idea that Catholics needed to learn science and that the bible was to be interpreted rather than taken literally. He was also an important figure in "Catholic Alpinism", a movement that sought to use mountains to tell God's glory. Stoppani was however a critic of the ideas of evolution that Darwin's publication had brought into Europe.
Stoppani's works on paleontology and geology include:
''Paleontologie Lombarde''(1858–1881)
* ''Les Pétrifications d'Ésino, ou Description des fossiles appartenant au dépôt triasique supérieur des environs d'Esino en Lombardie''] (1858–1860)
* ''Géologie et paleontologie des conches a Avicula Contorta en Lombardie'' (1860–1865)
* ''Corso di geologia'' (3 vols, 1871–1873)
vol. 1vol. 2vol. 3]
* ''Geologia d'Italia''
** Volume 1
''Descrizione del terreni componenti il suolo d'Italia''(1874)
** Volume 2
(1880)
In this last work the author discussed the glaciation of the Italian
Alps
The Alps () ; german: Alpen ; it, Alpi ; rm, Alps ; sl, Alpe . are the highest and most extensive mountain range system that lies entirely in Europe, stretching approximately across seven Alpine countries (from west to east): France, Sw ...
and the history of Italy during the
Pleistocene
The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...
age.
Stoppani described several species of fossil molluscs while other fossil species have been named in his honour, including ''Fedaiella stoppanii'' Marini 1896 (a snail), ''Placochelyanus stoppanii'' Oswald 1930, ''Lymnaea stoppanianus'' Coppi, 1876 and ''Gyraulus (Gyraulus) stoppanii'' (Sacco, 1886). Most of his collections are in the ''
Museo di Storia Naturale, Milano'', the building of which he was responsible for constructing as director from 1882 to 1891.
Stoppani Glacier
Stoppani Glacier is a valley glacier located in Alberto de Agostini National Park, Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego. The glacier spills out from the backbone of the Cordillera Darwin
The Cordillera Darwin is an extensive mountain range mantled by ...
in Tierra del Fuego is named after him.
Stoppani was the great-uncle of
Maria Montessori, famous for her work on education; he was the uncle of Maria's mother Renilde. The Italian painter Giovanni Battista Todeschini (1857–1938) was his nephew. An oil painting of Stoppani made by Todeschini is held in the
Public Museum at Lecco.
Anthropocene
![Monumento ad Antonio Stoppani](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Monumento_ad_Antonio_Stoppani.JPG)
In 1873 Stoppani acknowledged the increasing power and impact of humanity on the Earth's systems and referred to the ''anthropozoic era''
an idea that was possibly based on
George Perkins Marsh
George Perkins Marsh (March 15, 1801July 23, 1882), an American diplomat and philologist, is considered by some to be America's first environmentalist and by recognizing the irreversible impact of man's actions on the earth, a precursor to the ...
who lived in Italy and whose work, ''Man and Nature'', was translated into Italian in 1872. In a later edition of ''Man and Nature'' published as ''The Earth as Modified by Human Action'' in 1874, Marsh noted:
The idea of a new geological epoch, the
anthropocene, was proposed in 2000 by
Paul Crutzen
Paul Jozef Crutzen (; 3 December 1933 – 28 January 2021) was a Dutch meteorologist and atmospheric chemist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995 for his work on atmospheric chemistry and specifically for his efforts in studying ...
and Eugene Stoermer. While some have pointed to the ideas of Marsh, Stoppani,
Teilhard de Chardin
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin ( (); 1 May 1881 – 10 April 1955) was a French Jesuit priest, scientist, paleontologist
Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and ...
and
Vladimir Vernadsky (''noösphere'') as precursors, others have pointed out a distinction in the geological epoch proposed by Crutzen. Whereas the effects of man proposed in the past were small and gradual, the effects are sharply marked in Crutzen's anthropocene.
References
External links
Il Bel Paese(1915 edition)
Studii geologici e paleontologici sulla Lombardia(1857)
Il Dogma e le Scienze Positive (1884)* Corso di geologi
volume 1volume 2volume 3
Les Pétrifications d'Ésino
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stoppani, Antonio
1824 births
1891 deaths
People from Lecco
19th-century Italian geologists
Italian paleontologists
Catholic clergy scientists