List Of Italian Scientists

This is a list of notable Italian scientists organized by the era in which they were active.

Ancient

*Parmenides (530BC-460BC), Greek philosopher, defender of rationalism in philosophy
* Marcus Terentius Varro (116-27), mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, founder of the wise Roman calendar
* Adrastus of Cyzicus (116-27), astronomer
* Cicero (106-43), philosopher
* Lucretius (94-55), philosopher, Scientist named after the crater on the Moon
* Seneca (4-65), philosopher
* Pliny the Elder (23-79), botanist, natural philosopher
*Pliny the Younger (61-113), inventor, scholar and philosopher
* Marcus Aurelius (121-180), philosopher, emperor
*Augustine Of Hippo (354-430), philosopher
* Boethius (480-524), philosopher

Middle Ages

*Mondino de Liuzzi (c. 1270–1326), physician and anatomist whose ''Anathomia corporis humani'' (MS. 1316; first printed in 1478) was the first modern work on anatomy
* Guido da Vigevano (c. 1280–c. 1349), physician and inventor who became one of the first writers to include illustrations in a work on anatomy
*Trotula (11th–12th centuries), physician who wrote several influential works on women's medicine; whose texts on gynecology and obstetrics were widely used for several hundred years in Europe
* Rogerius (before 1140–c. 1195), surgeon who wrote a work on medicine entitled ''Practica Chirurgiae'' ("The Practice of Surgery") around 1180
* Giovanni Dondi dell'Orologio (1330–1388), doctor and clock-maker at Padua, son of Jacopo Dondi, builder of the Astrarium
* Jacopo Dondi dell'Orologio (1293–1359), doctor and clock-maker at Padua, father of Giovanni
* Leonardo Fibonacci (c. 1170–c. 1250), mathematician, eponym of the Fibonacci number sequence, considered to be the most talented Western mathematician of the Middle Ages

Renaissance

* Leon Battista Alberti (1404—1472), humanist, art theorist, artist, architect, philosopher, engineer, mathematician, inventor, and author, considered the prototype of the Renaissance universal man
* Benedetto Cotrugli (1416–1469), merchant, economist, scientist, diplomat and humanist; his '' Della mercatura e del mercante perfetto'' contains an early description of the double-entry bookkeeping system, predating Luca Pacioli's Summa de arithmetica of 1494
* Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), philosopher, astronomer, architect, engineer, inventor, mathematician, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, sculptor, botanist, writer, father of hydraulic science, painter of Mona Lisa and Last Supper, regarded by many as the greatest genius in history
* Domenico Maria Novara (1454–1504), professor of astronomy at the University of Bologna for 21 years, had Nicolaus Copernicus among his notable students
* Vannoccio Biringuccio (c. 1480–c. 1539), engineer and metallurgist whose work '' De la pirotechnia'' pioneered scientific and technical literature.
* Jacopo Berengario da Carpi (c. 1460–c. 1530), physician and anatomist who was the first to describe the heart valves
* Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli (1397–1482), mathematician, astronomer and cosmographer who influenced Christopher Colombus
*Piero Borgi (1424–1484), mathematician, author of many of the best books on arithmetic written in the 15th Century
*Francesco Maurolico (1494-1575), mathematician and astronomer, made contributions to the fields of geometry, optics, conics, mechanics and music, edited the works of classical authors as Archimedes, Apollonius, Theodosius and many others
* Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605), naturalist, noted for his systematic and accurate observations of animals, plants and minerals
*Gaspare Aselli ( c. 1581–1625), physician who contributed to the knowledge of the circulation of body fluids by discovering the lacteal vessels
* Gerolamo Cardano (1501–1576), mathematician and physician; initiated the general theory of cubic and quartic equations; emphasized the need for both negative and complex numbers
* Bartolomeo Eustachi (1500 or 1514–1574), anatomist, described many structures in the human body, including the Eustachian tube of the ear
* Federico Commandino (1509–1575), humanist and mathematician, translator of many works of ancient mathematicians, the proposition known as Commandino's theorem first appears in his work on centers of gravity
*Giacomo Antonio Cortuso (1513–1603), botanist
* Andrea Cesalpino (1519–1603), physician, philosopher and botanist, produced the first scientific classification of plants and animals by genera and species
* Realdo Colombo (c. 1516–1559), one of the first anatomists in the Western world to describe pulmonary circulation
*Costanzo Varolio (1543–1575), remembered for his studies on the anatomy of the brain, and his description of the pons that bears his name
*Gasparo Tagliacozzi (1546–1599), plastic surgeon; considered a pioneer in the field; called the father of plastic surgery
* Girolamo Fracastoro (1478–1553), physician and scholar; first to state the germ theory of infection; regarded as the founder of scientific epidemiology
*Luca Pacioli (1446/7–1517), mathematician and founder of accounting; popularized the system of double bookkeeping for keeping financial records; often cited as the father of modern accounting
* Lodovico Ferrari (1522–1565), mathematician, famous for having discovered the solution of the general quartic equation
* Luca Ghini (1490–1556), physician and botanist, best known as the creator of the first recorded herbarium and founder of the world's first botanical garden
* Aloysius Lilius (c. 1510–1576), astronomer and physician; principal author of the Gregorian Calendar (1582)
* Gabriele Falloppio (1523–1562), anatomist and physician; important discoveries include the fallopian tubes, leading from uterus to ovaries
* Scipione del Ferro (1465–1526), mathematician, the first to discover a method to solve the depressed cubic equation
* Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia (1499–1557), mathematician who originated the science of ballistics
* Giambattista della Porta (c. 1535–1615), scholar and polymath, known for his work '' Magia Naturalis'' (1558), which dealt with alchemy, magic, and natural philosophy
* Franciscus Patricius (1529–1597), philosopher and scientist, defender of Platonism and opponent of Aristotelianism, opposed the traditional view of the meaning of historical studies, which was usually restricted to moral instruction, with his concept of a broad, neutral, scientific historical research
* Michele Mercati (1541–1593), physician, one of the first to recognize prehistoric stone tools as man-made
* Rafael Bombelli (1526–1572), mathematician, a central figure in the understanding of imaginary numbers, was the first to document the rules of addition and multiplication of complex numbers
* Ignazio Danti (1536–1586), Dominican mathematician, astronomer, cosmographer, and cartographer
* Hieronymus Fabricius (1537–1619), anatomist and surgeon, called the founder of modern embryology
*Leonardo Garzoni (1543–1592), Jesuit natural philosopher; author of the first known example of a modern treatment of magnetic phenomena
* Guidobaldo del Monte (1545–1607), mathematician, philosopher and astronomer, a staunch friend of Galileo, wrote a highly influential book about perspective
*Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), missionary to China, mathematician, linguist and published the first Chinese edition of Euclid's Elements
*Giordano Bruno (1548–1600)
*Pietro Cataldi (1548–1626), mathematician, discovered the sixth and seventh perfect numbers; his discovery of the 7th (for p=19) held the record for the largest known prime for almost two centuries, until Leonhard Euler discovered that 231 - 1 was the eighth Mersenne prime
*Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623), historian, scientist, canon lawyer, and statesman on behalf of the Venetian Republic, highly critical of the Scholastic tradition, a proponent of the Copernican system, his extensive network of correspondents included Francis Bacon and William Harvey
* Giovanni Antonio Magini (1555–1617), astronomer, astrologer, cartographer and mathematician, known for his reduced size edition of Ptolemy's ''Geographiae'' (1596)
* Fausto Veranzio (1551–1617), polymath and inventor from the Republic of Venice; his most important work ''Machinae Novae'' describes 49 machines, tools and technical concepts that predated many future inventions

17th century

* Antonio Filippo Ciucci (d.1710), physician, one of first forensic toxicologists
* Giovanni Battista Riccioli (1598–1671), astronomer, devised the system for the nomenclature of lunar features that is now the international standard
*Sanctorius (1561–1636), physiologist and physician; laid the foundation for the study of metabolism
* Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), physicist and astronomer; founder of modern science; accurately described the heliocentric Solar System
* Federico Cesi (1585–1630), scientist and naturalist, founder of the Accademia dei Lincei
* Eustachio Divini (1610–1685), mathematician, astronomer, physicist, techniques required for the construction of optical instruments he was the first scientist to develop the techniques necessary for the construction of optical instruments.
* Vincenzo Viviani (1622–1703), mathematician
* Gjuro Baglivi (1668–1707), physician and scientist; published the first clinical description of pulmonary edema; made classic observations on the histology and physiology of muscle
* Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (1608–1679), physiologist and physicist who was the first to explain muscular movement and other body functions according to the laws of statics and dynamics
* Giuseppe Campani (1635–1715), optician and astronomer who invented a lens-grinding lathe
* Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1625–1712), mathematician, astronomer and engineer who was the first to observe four of Saturn's moons and the co-discoverer of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter
* Bonaventura Cavalieri (1598–1647), mathematician, invented the method of indivisibles (1635) that foreshadowed integral calculus
*Giacinto Cestoni (1637–1718), naturalist, studied fleas and algae, and showed that scabies is provoked by '' Sarcoptes scabiei'' (1689)
*Giovanni Battista Hodierna (1597–1660), astronomer, one of the first to create a catalog of celestial objects with a telescope
* Niccolò Zucchi (1586–1670), astronomer and physicist; may have been the first to observe belts on the planet Jupiter with a telescope (on 17 May 1630), also claimed to have explored the idea of a reflecting telescope in 1616, predating Galileo Galilei and Giovanni Francesco Sagredo's discussions of the same idea a few years later
* Giovanni Battista Zupi (c. 1590–1650), astronomer and mathematician; discovered that the planet Mercury had orbital phases
* Antonio Vallisneri (1661–1730), physician and naturalist who made numerous experiments in entomology and human organology, and combated the doctrine of spontaneous generation
* Antonio Maria Valsalva (1666–1723), professor of anatomy at Bologna; described several anatomical features of the ear in his book ''De aure humana tractatus'' (1704)
* Evangelista Torricelli (1608–1647), physicist and mathematician, inventor of the barometer (1643)
*Tito Livio Burattini (1617–1681), mathematician, in his book ''Misura Universale'', published in 1675, first suggested the name meter as the name for a unit of length
*Francesco Stelluti (1577–1652), polymath who worked in the fields of mathematics, microscopy, literature and astronomy; in 1625 he published the first accounts of microscopic observation
* Marcello Malpighi (1628–1694), physician and biologist; regarded as the founder of microscopic anatomy and may be regarded as the first histologist
*Francesco Maria Grimaldi (1618–1663), physicist and mathematician; noted for his discoveries in the field of optics; first to describe the diffraction of light
* Geminiano Montanari (1633–1687), astronomer; known for his discovery of the variability of the star Algol (c. 1667)
*Giovanni Maria Lancisi (1654–1720), clinician and anatomist who is considered the first modern hygienist
* Bernardino Ramazzini (1633–1714), physician, considered a founder of occupational medicine
*Francesco Redi (1626–1697), physician who demonstrated that the presence of maggots in putrefying meat does not result from spontaneous generation but from eggs laid on the meat by flies
* Luigi Ferdinando Marsili (1658–1730), scholar, natural scientist and soldier, one of the founders of modern oceanography
* Giovanni Ceva (1647–1734), mathematician, widely known for proving Ceva's theorem in elementary geometry

18th century

* Giovanni Girolamo Saccheri (1667–1733), philosopher and mathematician who did early work on non-Euclidean geometry, although he did not see it as such
* Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718–1799), linguist, mathematician and philosopher, considered to be the first woman in the Western world to have achieved a reputation in mathematics
* Laura Bassi (1711–1778), scientist who was the first woman to become a physics professor at a European university
*Ruggiero Giuseppe Boscovich (1711–1787), physicist, astronomer, mathematician, philosopher, diplomat, poet, theologian, Jesuit priest, a precursor of the atomic theory, made many contributions to astronomy, also discovered the absence of atmosphere on the Moon
*Giuseppe Toaldo (1719–1797), physicist, gave special attention to the study of atmospheric electricity and to the means of protecting buildings against lightning
*Anna Morandi Manzolini (1714–1774), internationally known anatomist and anatomical wax artist who lectured at the University of Bologna
*Giovanni Manzolini (1700–1755), well-known maker of anatomical models and Professor of anatomy at Bologna
* Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1778–1823), prolific explorer and pioneer archaeologist of Egyptian antiquities
* Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729–1799), biologist and physiologist, called the father of artificial insemination (done at Pavia in 1784)
* Giovanni Arduino (1714–1795), father of Italian geology, who established bases for stratigraphic chronology by classifying the four main layers of the Earth's crust
*Luigi Galvani (1737–1798), physician and physicist, noted for his discovery of animal electricity
* Giuseppe Luigi Lagrange (1736–1813), mathematician and astronomer who contributed in the fields of mechanics, number theory and analysis, known for Lagrangian points and Lagrangian mechanics
* Jacopo Riccati (1676–1754), mathematician, known in connection with his problem, called Riccati's equation, published in the ''Acla eruditorum'' (1724)
* Luigi Guido Grandi (1671–1742), philosopher, mathematician and engineer, known for studying the rose curve, a curve which has the shape of a petalled flower, and for Grandi's series
* Tiberius Cavallo (1749–1809), physicist and natural philosopher who wrote on the early experiments with electricity; was known contemporaneously as the inventor of Cavallo's multiplier
* Giuseppe Piazzi (1746–1826), mathematician and astronomer who discovered and named the first asteroid, or "minor planet", Ceres
* Carlo Amoretti (1741–1816), scholar, writer, and scientist, his mind encompassed theology, physics, geology, paleography, geography, and art history
* Pellegrino Turri, built the first typewriter proven to have worked (1808); invented carbon paper (1806)
*Alessandro Volta (1745–1827), electricity pioneer, eponym of the volt, inventor of the electric battery (1800)
* Luigi Valentino Brugnatelli (1761–1818), chemist and discoverer of the electroplating process (1802-'05)
* Tommaso Campailla (1668–1740), physician, philosopher and poet, inventor of "vapour stovens" that he used to fight syphilis rheumatism
*Giuseppe Olivi (1769–1795), abbot and naturalist, his wide interests stretched from chemistry, passing through mineralogy and agriculture, to botany; one of the first to make observations under the water

19th century

* Amedeo Avogadro (1776–1856), chemist, most noted for his contribution to molecular theory now known as Avogadro's law, which states that equal volumes of gases under the same conditions of temperature and pressure will contain equal numbers of molecules.
* Giovanni Battista Amici (1786–1863), astronomer and microscopist, inventor of the catadioptric microscope (presented at the Arts and Industry Exhibition in Milan in 1812)
*Giulio Bizzozero (1846–1901), anatomist, known as the original discoverer of '' Helicobacter pylori'' (1893)
*Leopoldo Marco Antonio Caldani (1725–1813), anatomist and physiologist; noted for his experimental studies on the function of the spinal cord
*Temistocle Calzecchi-Onesti (1853–1922), physicist, invented a tube filled with iron filings, called a " coherer" (1884)
* Stanislao Cannizzaro (1826–1910), chemist, in 1858 put an end to confusion over values to be attributed to atomic weights, using Avogadro's hypothesis
*Giovanni Battista Brocchi (1772–1826), naturalist, mineralogist and geologist, presented the thesis that species, like individuals, age and eventually die out, that later influenced Charles Darwin
* Antonio Cardarelli (1831–1926), physician remembered for describing Cardarelli's sign
* Olinto De Pretto (1857–1921), industrialist and geologist, may have been the first person to derive the energy–mass-equivalence $E=mc^2$, generally attributed to Albert Einstein
* Vincenzo Cerulli (1859–1927), astronomer, the author of the idea that the canali are just a special kind of optical illusion
* Ernesto Cesàro (1859–1906), mathematician; in 1880 he developed methods of finding the sum of divergent series; made important contributions to intrinsic geometry
* Agostino Codazzi (1793–1859), soldier, scientist, geographer, cartographer
* Gabrio Piola (1794–1850), physicist and mathematician who made fundamental contributions to continuum mechanics
*Vincenzo Chiarugi (1759–1820), physician who introduced humanitarian reforms to the psychiatric hospital care of people with mental disorders
* Francesco de Vico (1805–1848), astronomer, discovered a number of comets, including periodic comets 54P/de Vico-Swift-NEAT and 122P/de Vico