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Information about Ulysse Aldrovandi

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Ulisse Aldrovandi.
Ulisse Aldrovandi (11 September 1522 - 4 May 1605) was an Italian naturalist, the moving force behind Bologna's botanical garden, one of the first in Europe. Carolus Linnaeus and the comte de Buffon reckoned him the father of natural history studies. He is usually referred to, especially in older literature, as Aldrovandus.

Early life and education

Aldrovandi was born in Bologna to a noble family, which sent him to apprentice with merchants, but he found his vocation, after studying humanities and law at the universities of Bologna and Padua and becoming a notary. Successively his interests went out to philosophy and logic which he combined with the study of medicine.

He obtained a degree in medicine and philosophy in 1553 and started teaching logic and philosophy in 1554 at the University of Bologna. In 1559 he became professor of philosophy and in 1561 he became the first professor of natural sciences at Bologna (lectura philosophiae naturalis ordinaria de fossilibus, plantis et animalibus).

Arrest for heresy

In June of 1549 he was accused and arrested for heresy, for espousing the anti-trinitarian beliefs of the Anabaptist Camillo Renato. By September he had published an abjuration, but was transferred to Rome, and remained in custody or house arrest till absolved in April 1550. During this time he befriended many local scholars. While in semi-captivity there he became more and more interested in botanics, zoology and geology (apparently he can be credited for the invention/first written record of this word). From 1551 onward, he organized a variety of expeditions to the Italian mountains, countryside, islands, and coasts in order to collect and catalogue plants.

Natural history work

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From Ornithologiae, 1599
In the course of his life he would assemble one of the most spectacular cabinets of curiosities, his "theatre" illuminating natural history comprising some 7000 specimens of the diversità di cose naturali, of which he wrote a description in 1595. Between 1551 and 1554 he organised several expeditions to collect plants for a herbarium, among the first botanizing expeditions. Eventually his herbarium contained aboiut 4760 dried specimens on 4117 sheets in sixteen volumes, preserved at the University of Bologna. He also had various artists, including Jacopo Ligozzi, Giovanni Neri, and Cornelio Schwindt, make illustrations of specimens.

Botanic garden

At his demand and under his direction a public botanic garden was created in Bologna in 1568. Due to a dispute on the composition of a popular medicine with the pharmacists and doctors of Bologna in 1575 he was suspended from all public position for five years. In 1577 he sought the aid of pope Gregory XIII (a cousin of his mother) who wrote to the authorities of Bologna to reinstate Aldrovandi in his public offices and request financial aid to help him publish his books.

Collections

His vast collections in botany and zoology he willed to the Senate of Bologna; until 1742 the collections were conserved in the Palazzo Pubblico, then in the Palazzo Poggi, but were distributed among various libraries and institutions in the course of the nineteenth century. In 1907 a representative part were reunited at Palazzo Poggi, Bologna, where the 400th anniversary of his death was memorialized in a celebrative exhibition in 2005.

List of works

Of the several hundred books and essays he wrote, only a handful were published during his lifetime:

Honors

External links

Further Reading

September 11th, 11th September, and 9/11 (pronounced "Nine-eleven") have been widely used in the Western media as a shorthand for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon in the United States of America.
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Anthem
Il Canto degli Italiani
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Natural history or (in Latin) Naturalis Historia is the scientific study of plants or animals.

Natural History may also refer to:

In science and medicine:
  • Natural History (Pliny), Naturalis Historia

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Country Italy
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Province Bologna (BO)
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Botanical gardens grow a wide variety of plants primarily categorized and documented for scientific purposes. Botanists and horticulturalists tend the flora and maintain the garden's library and herbarium of dried and documented plant material.
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Europe is one of the seven traditional continents of the Earth. Physically and geologically, Europe is the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, west of Asia. Europe is bounded to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the west by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the Mediterranean Sea,
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Carolus Linnaeus (Carl von Linné)

Carl von Linné, Alexander Roslin, 1775. Currently owned by and hanging at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
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Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (September 7, 1707 – April 16, 1788) was a French naturalist, mathematician, biologist, cosmologist and author. Buffon's views influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Charles Darwin.
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Natural history or (in Latin) Naturalis Historia is the scientific study of plants or animals.

Natural History may also refer to:

In science and medicine:
  • Natural History (Pliny), Naturalis Historia

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Country Italy
Region Emilia-Romagna
Province Bologna (BO)
Mayor Sergio Cofferati

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The humanities are those academic disciplines which study the human condition using methods that are largely analytic, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural and social sciences.
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Notary can refer to any of the following professions:
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Philosophy is the discipline concerned with questions of how one should live (ethics); what sorts of things exist and what are their essential natures (metaphysics); what counts as genuine knowledge (epistemology); and what are the correct principles of reasoning (logic).
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Logic (from Classical Greek λόγος logos; meaning word, thought, idea, argument, account, reason, or principle) is the study of the principles and criteria of valid inference and demonstration.
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Philosophy is the discipline concerned with questions of how one should live (ethics); what sorts of things exist and what are their essential natures (metaphysics); what counts as genuine knowledge (epistemology); and what are the correct principles of reasoning (logic).
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Logic (from Classical Greek λόγος logos; meaning word, thought, idea, argument, account, reason, or principle) is the study of the principles and criteria of valid inference and demonstration.
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natural science refers to a rational approach to the study of the universe, which is understood as obeying rules or laws of natural origin. The term natural science
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For other uses of the term, see Fossil (disambiguation)


FOSSIL is a standard for allowing serial communication for telecommunications programs under the DOS operating system.
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Botany is the scientific study of plant life. As a branch of biology, it is also called plant science(s), phytology, or plant biology. Botany covers a wide range of scientific disciplines that study plants, algae, and fungi including: structure, growth,
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Zoology (from Greek: ζῴον, zoion, "animal"; and λόγος, logos, "knowledge") is the biological discipline which involves the study of animals.
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