Franco Andrea Bonelli

Franco Andrea Bonelli

Franco Andrea Bonelli (born November 10, 1784 in Cuneo , Piedmont, † November 18, 1830 in Turin ) was an Italian zoologist , ornithologist and collector.

Little is known of Bonelli's career. It is known that he was interested in the fauna of his surroundings from a young age, hunted, prepared and collected animals and also wrote down his observations. The rickets suffered from Bonelli was only 1.37 m tall.

In 1807 he became a member of the Reale Società Agraria di Torino (Royal Agricultural Society of Turin) and lectured there on the beetles of Piedmont. The natural scientists of his time became aware of him through the high quality of his designs.

In April 1810, Georges Cuvier was sent by the Napoleonic French government to Turin to reform the university there and to unite it with the imperial university founded by Napoleon. Cuvier met Bonelli, was impressed by him and encouraged him to complete his training. Bonelli then attended courses at the French National Museum of Natural History (Muséum national d'histoire naturelle) in Paris from 1810 .

In 1811 Bonelli was finally appointed professor of zoology at the new University of Turin and director of the university's zoological museum, succeeding Michele Spirito Giorna . During his time at the museum he put on one of the largest ornithological collections in Europe.

In 1811 Bonelli wrote a catalog of the birds of Piedmont , in which he describes 262 species. In 1815 he discovered the mountain warbler ( Phylloscopus bonelli , first described by Louis Pierre Vieillot in 1819 ) and the Bonelli's eagle ( Hieraaetus fasciatus , first described by Vieillot in 1822). The Bonelli's eagle was known in French and English as the Aigle de Bonelli and Bonelli's eagle , respectively .

Bonelli's successor at the Turin Museum was Carlo Giuseppe Gené (1800–1847).

Works

• Catalog des Oiseaux du Piedmont . 1811.

literature

• Pietro Passerin d'Entrèves, G. Sella Gentile: Franco Andrea Bonelli zoologo trasformista . In: Studi Piemontesi . Volume XIV, 1985, pp. 33-50
• Achille Casale, Pier Mauro Giachino: Franco Andrea Bonelli (1784-1830), an entomologist in Turin at the beginning of the XIX century . Phylogeny and Classification of Caraboidea. XX International Congress of Entomology . Museo Regionale di Scienze Naturali Torino 1998, pp. 53-80