Giotto Dainelli

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Giotto Dainelli Dolfi (born May 19, 1878 in Florence ; † November 16, 1968 there ) was an Italian geologist and geographer.

Life

Dolfi was the son of a general and studied natural sciences at the Istituto di Studi Superiori in Florence with Carlo De Stefani (with the Laureate degree in 1900) and at the University of Vienna. In 1903 he completed his habilitation in geology and physical geography in Florence (Libero Docente) and was professor of geography in Pisa from 1914 to 1921 . After a short time professor of geology in Naples he was from 1924 as successor to De Stefani professor of geology and paleontology in Florence. In 1928 he won a competition for a geography professorship in Cairo, but could not take it for political reasons. He joined the fascist Italian Social Republic and was mayor of Florence from February 1944 until the city was liberated in August. When the Allies arrived, he moved to Salò on Lake Garda like other fascists . In 1953 he retired and moved to Rome. Shortly before his death he moved back to Florence.

He took part in many expeditions to East Africa and Asia: 1905 to 1906 in Eritrea (with his friend Olinto Marinèlli, the results were published in 1912), 1913 to 1914 in the Karakoram (De Filippi expedition also with the participation of Marinelli, the results were published in 12 volumes published in Bologna from 1922 to 1934), 1930 in Tibet (on an expedition financed by himself), 1936/37 on Lake Tana in Ethiopia (on behalf of the Accademia d´Italia). He discovered the source of the Yarcant River . He has made over 600 publications. In addition to physical geography, he also worked out an economic geographic atlas of Italy (1940).

After the Second World War, popular scientific works predominated. He was an avid mountaineer who published a book on Mont Blanc in 1926 and on the Alps in 1963. In 1941 he published a book about Marco Polo's travels and published a series on explorers (1959 to 1967 in 8 volumes).

30 fossil animal species (and four recent ones) and a mountain peak in the Caucasus are named after him (Dainelli). In Italy he studied the Eocene of Friuli and Dalmatia, the Florence basin, the central Apennines and the Salento peninsula, in Africa the Somali highlands and neighboring regions, in Asia the glacial basin of the Transhimalaya, India and the stratigraphy in the Karakoram and western Himalayas .

He was a member of the Accademia d'Italia (of which he was president in 1944/45 after the assassination of Giovanni Gentile ), the Accademia dei Lincei , the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and President of the Italian Geological Society. In 1954 he received the gold medal of the Italian Geographic Society. In 1942 he became a member of the Leopoldina .

Fonts

  • Memorie geologiche e geografiche di Giotto Dainelli, 1930 (his Memorie geografiche appeared from 1907 to 1919 in 39 issues as a supplement to the Rivista geografica italiana and in 1930 four additional issues)
  • Il mio viaggio nel Tibet occidentale, Milan 1932
  • La regione del lago Tana, Milan 1939
  • La conquista della Terra. Storia delle esplorazioni, 1950 (popular science)

literature

  • Giuseppe Vedovato: Giotto Dainelli tra scienza e politica, Rivista di studi di politica Internazionale, Volume 76, 2009, pp. 381-421.
  • Ilaria Luzzana Caraci, entry Giotto Dainelli in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 1986, Treccani

Web links

References and comments

  1. ^ Member entry by Giotto Dainelli at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on October 14, 2015.