Bruno Parisi (6 June 1884 – 26 January 1957) was an Italian

zoologist Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the Animal, animal kingdom, including the anatomy, structure, embryology, evolution, Biological clas ...

and museum director. His main research field were the

crustacean Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean group ...

s (Crustacea). From 1928 to 1951 he was director of the

Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano The Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano (Milan Natural History Museum) is a museum in Milan, Italy. It was founded in 1838 when naturalist Giuseppe de Cristoforis donated his collections to the city. Its first director was Giorgio Jan. ...

Career

Parisi was born in

Taio Taio (german: Thayl or ''Theyl'', Ladin language, Ladin: ''Taj'') was a ''Communes of Trentino, comune'' (municipality) in Trentino in the northern Italy, Italian region Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, located about north of Trento. As of 31 Dece ...

. As a student at the

University of Innsbruck The University of Innsbruck (german: Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck; la, Universitas Leopoldino Franciscea) is a public research university in Innsbruck, the capital of the Austrian federal state of Tyrol, founded on October 15, 1669. ...

, he was involved in a 1904 revolt by Italian students, who asked for an Italian-speaking university in

Trieste Trieste ( , ; sl, Trst ; german: Triest ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is the capital city, and largest city, of the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, one of two autonomous regions which are not subdivided into provi ...

, which was at that time under Austrian sovereign. Parisi was arrested, sentenced to three months in jail and then banned from all Austrian universities. Then he moved to

Turin Turin ( , Piedmontese language, Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital ...

, where he graduated in

natural sciences Natural science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatab ...

in 1908. In 1910 he became assistant in the Zoological Department of the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano, where he took over the management in 1921. In 1928, he was the successor of

Ettore Artini Ettore is a given name, the Italian version of Hector. People *Ettore Arrigoni degli Oddi (1867–1942), Italian naturalist *Ettore Bassi (born 1970), Italian actor and television presenter *Ettore Bastianini (1922–1967), Italian opera singer *Et ...

(1866-1928) as the museum director, a post he held until his retirement in 1951.Daniela Pessani, Tina Tirelli, Carlo Froglia: ''Museo Regionale di Scienze Naturali. Atti IX Colloquium Crustacea Mediterranea.Torino, September 2–6, 2008'', Torino 2011, p 238 (biography) Parisi studied a large collection of Japanese decapods (

Decapoda The Decapoda or decapods (literally "ten-footed") are an order of crustaceans within the class Malacostraca, including many familiar groups, such as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp and prawns. Most decapods are scavengers. The order is esti ...

), which the museum acquired from

Alan Owston Alan Owston (1853–1915) was born on 7 August 1853 at Pirbright, Surrey and was buried on 30 November 1915 at Yokohama in Japan. He was a collector of Asian wildlife, businessman and yachtsman, and founded the Yokohama Yacht Club in Japan. Alan Ow ...

(1853-1915), a British merchant and collector of natural history objects based in

Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of To ...

. He described 23 new

taxa In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; plural taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular nam ...

of decapods in the Zoological notices ''I decapodi giapponesi del museo di Milano'', published from 1914 to 1919 in the Museum Journal. A further seven taxa first described by Parisi come from the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the e ...

and other regions. During air raids of Allied forces to

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 ...

in August 1943, the museum was severely damaged by firebombs, whereby an important part of the collections and the library get lost. Parisi's office was also destroyed. From a collection of

benthic The benthic zone is the ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water such as an ocean, lake, or stream, including the sediment surface and some sub-surface layers. The name comes from ancient Greek, βένθος (bénthos), meaning "t ...

decapods Parisi collected during a cruise to the

Red Sea The Red Sea ( ar, البحر الأحمر - بحر القلزم, translit=Modern: al-Baḥr al-ʾAḥmar, Medieval: Baḥr al-Qulzum; or ; Coptic: ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϩⲁϩ ''Phiom Enhah'' or ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϣⲁⲣⲓ ''Phiom ǹšari''; T ...

in 1923 and 1924, just a few glasses were saved, as well as a brief note on the

mantis shrimp Mantis shrimp, or stomatopods, are carnivorous marine crustaceans of the order Stomatopoda (). Stomatopods branched off from other members of the class Malacostraca around 340 million years ago. Mantis shrimp typically grow to around in lengt ...

s (Stomatopoda) collected during this expedition, which was published in 1940.Parisi, Bruno, 1940. Gli Stomatopodi raccolti dal Prof. L. Sanzo nella Campagna idrografica nel Mar Rosso della R.N. Ammiraglio Magnaghi 1923–1924. – R. Comitato talassografico italiano, Memoria, 275: 17. After the war Parisi devoted to the reconstruction of the museum, where he was actively supported by his successor

Edgardo Moltoni Edgardo Moltoni (5 June 1896 — 12 January 1980) was an Italian ornithologist who worked in the Natural History Museum at Milan. He worked at the museum collections for nearly fifty eight years and was the author of a four volume treatise on the ...

. In 1924, Italian zoologist

Oscar de Beaux Oscar de Beaux (5 December 1879 – 29 September 1955) was an Italian mammalogist. His studies of mammals primarily concerned the Italian colonies of Africa. De Beaux was also a conservationist, authoring one of the first papers to argue the e ...

commemorated Parisi in the epithet of Parissi's slit-faced bat (''Nycteris parisii''). In 1956, Dutch zoologist

Lipke Holthuis Lipke Bijdeley Holthuis (21 April 1921 – 7 March 2008) was a Dutch crustacean, carcinologist, considered one of the "undisputed greats" of carcinology, and "the greatest carcinologist of our time". Holthuis was born in Probolinggo, East Java a ...

named the Malagasy decapod genus '' Parisia'' in honor of Bruno Parisi. Parisi died in Roverè della Luna.

References

*Moltoni, Edgardo, 1957. Bruno Parisi (1884 – 1957). Atti della Società Italiana di Scienze naturali e del Museo civico di Storia naturale in Milano, 96: 211–222. (obituary)

Cited sources

{{DEFAULTSORT:Parisi, Bruno 1884 births 1957 deaths Directors of museums in Italy Italian carcinologists Italian curators 20th-century Italian zoologists