Bruno Parisi

Bruno Parisi (born June 6, 1884 in Taio , † January 26, 1957 in Roverè della Luna ) was an Italian zoologist and museum director. His research focus were the crustaceans (Crustacea). From 1928 to 1951 he was director of the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano .

Life

As a student at the University of Innsbruck , Parisi was involved in a revolt of Italian students in 1904 who demanded an Italian-speaking university in Trieste , which at the time was under Austrian rule. Parisi was arrested, sentenced to three months in prison and then banned from all Austrian universities. He then moved to Turin , where he graduated in natural sciences in 1908. In 1910 he became an employee in the zoological department of the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano, where he took over the management in 1921. In 1928 he succeeded Ettore Artini (1866–1928) as museum director, an office he held until his retirement in 1951.

Parisi studied a large collection of Japanese decapods , which the museum acquired from the Yokohama- based British businessman and natural history collector Alan Owston (1853-1915). He described 23 new decapodal cancer taxa in the zoological notices I decapodi giapponesi del museo di Milano , which were published in the museum journal between 1914 and 1919. Another seven taxa first described by Parisi come from the Mediterranean and other regions.

During air raids by Allied forces on Milan in August 1943, the museum was badly damaged by incendiary bombs, with an important part of the collections and the library being lost. Parisi's office was also destroyed. From a collection of benthic decapods that Parisi collected from 1923–1924 on a voyage to the Red Sea , only a few jars survived, as well as a brief report published in 1940 about the mantis shrimp discovered on this expedition . After the war, Parisi dedicated himself to the reconstruction of the museum, in which he was actively supported by his successor Edgardo Moltoni .

Dedication names

In 1924, the Italian zoologist Oscar de Beaux Parisi honored the Parisis slit- nosed bat ( Nycteris parisii ) in the species epithet . In 1956, the Dutch zoologist Lipke Bijdeley Holthuis named the Malagasy decipod genus Parisia in honor of Bruno Parisi.

literature

• 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)
• 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)

supporting documents

1. ^ Parisi, Bruno, 1940. Gli Stomatopodi raccolti dal Prof. L. Sanzo nella Campagna idrografica nel Mar Rosso della RN Ammiraglio Magnaghi 1923-1924. - R. Comitato talassografico italiano, Memoria, 275: 17.