Arturo Issel

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Arturo Issel

Arturo Issel (born April 11, 1842 in Genoa ; † November 27, 1922 there ) is an Italian geologist , paleontologist , prehistoric scientist and malacologist .

Issel studied in Pisa with the Laurea degree in 1862 with distinction and in 1866 became professor of mineralogy and geology at the University of Genoa. From 1876 he had a full professorship and in 1892 he gave up the professorship in mineralogy and kept the chair of geology. He retired in 1917.

He undertook the first excavations in the Arene Candide cave and is at the beginning of the archaeological research of prehistory in Liguria . In the contemporary environment there was a debate about the finds of antediluvian people (Debate about the finds of Moulin Quignon near Abbeville by Jacques Boucher de Perthes 1863). Issel supported the thesis of an antediluvian existence of humans.

In 1865 he published a treatise (only 50 copies printed in Genoa) in support of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution . Also in 1865 he was in Egypt for two months to excavate the Suez Canal, which was under construction, and to conduct zoological research, which led to a publication on mollusks in the Red Sea. In 1870 another expedition followed into the Red Sea with other Italian scientists ( Orazio Antinori , Odoardo Beccari ) to the coast of Ethiopia. Other expeditions took him to the Mediterranean area (for example, in 1865 in the Għar Dalam cave on Malta , where he found prehistoric human remains). He collected for the Geological Museum of the University of Genoa, of which he became director in 1891.

In 1867 he attended the conference on prehistory during the world exhibition in Paris, in which Paleolithic artifacts were presented to the public for the first time.

In 1874 he published on the Mollusks of Borneo . He examined earthquakes in Liguria, dealt with volcanology and created a geological map of the Ligurian coast and the Maritime Alps with D. Zaccagna and L. Mazzuoli (published in 1887) and with S. Squinabol of Liguria and its neighboring areas (1891). In 1892 he published his main work Liguria geologica e preistorica and in 1896/97 a geology textbook (Compendio di geologia, 2 volumes, Turin).

In 1914 he introduced the Tyrrhenian stage of the Pleistocene for the Mediterranean region.

In 1891 he was President of the Italian Geological Society and in 1921/22 of the Società Ligure di Storia Patria.

His son Raffaele Issel (1878-1936) was a zoology professor in Genoa.

Two submarine structures in the Tyrrhenian Sea are named after him.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Issel, Di una caverna ossifera di Finale, Genoa 1864
  2. ↑ Issel, Breve cenno sulla teoria di Darwin, Genoa 1865
  3. ↑ Issel, Moll Uschi con la Malacologia del mar Rosso, Pisa 1869
  4. ↑ Issel, Moll Uschi Borneensi, Genoa 1874 Archive
personal data
SURNAME Issel, Arturo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian geologist, paleontologist, prehistorian and malacologist
DATE OF BIRTH April 11, 1842
PLACE OF BIRTH Genoa
DATE OF DEATH November 27, 1922
Place of death Genoa