Giovanni Antonio Scopoli

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Conte Giovanni Antonio Scopoli , also Johann Anton Scopoli (born June 13, 1723 in Cavalese , † May 8, 1788 in Pavia ) was a Tyrolean - Habsburg , Italian doctor and naturalist . Its botanical author abbreviation is “ Scop. "

Giovanni Antonio Scopoli

Live and act

Scopoli was born in Cavalese in Val di Fiemme , at that time in the county of Tyrol, which was part of the Habsburg monarchy . His father Franz Anton was a lawyer and war commissioner for the Prince-Bishop of Trento , his mother Claudia Katharina came from the Trento patrician family von Gramola. He attended high schools in Cavalese, Trient and Hall in Tirol . At the University of Innsbruck he received his doctorate in 1743 with the thesis "De diaeta litteratorum" and then practiced as a general practitioner in Cavalese, Trient and Venice . At the age of 26 he married Albina von Miorini from Cavalese.

Since his youth he has devoted a large part of his time to studying the flora and fauna of his native Tyrol . Since there were no lectures on natural history in Innsbruck during his time, he acquired the necessary knowledge autodidactically, especially from the works of Joseph Pitton de Tournefort , John Ray and Carl von Linné . He put on extensive collections of plants and insects.

For two years he was the private secretary of the Prince-Bishop of Seckau Leopold Ernst von Firmian . During this time he prepared for the physics at the medical faculty of the University of Vienna (a physicus was a civil servant doctor in the state service), which he passed in 1753.

In 1754 he became Physicus for 700 guilders an annual salary in Idria in what was then the duchy, now the Slovenian region of Carniola, as the works doctor of the local mercury mine owned by the imperial court chamber. On the way there, the ship in which he was traveling with his wife sank in the Danube, so that he lost his household effects and all documents from that time. There he spent 16 years in constant conflict with the director, Bergrat von Sartori, who accused him of spending too much time on his scientific research in addition to constant arguments about accommodation, work equipment and benefits. In 1757 Sartori officially complained about him in Vienna, whereupon he was warned by the Empress for his behavior. His wife died in Idria in 1758, and in 1758 he remarried to Katharina von Frankenfeld. In 1763 he asked unsuccessfully because of his poor health for his transfer or retirement because of the unhealthy air in Idria. In the same year the mine director and the works pharmacist complained in Vienna that “Scopoli is 8, 14 days, even 3 weeks away from here to be responsible for the botanic and to colligate the insects”. Despite the dispute, in 1763 Scopoli was appointed professor of metallurgy and chemistry at the newly founded mountain school in Idria. His requests to build a laboratory were rejected for reasons of cost. In 1766 another naturalist, Belshazzar Hacquet , was employed as a surgeon and "Accucheur" (obstetrician) in Idria; one of the reasons why he chose the position was to be taught botany by Scopoli. In 1768, however, differences arose between them because of their medical duties.

Scopoli left Idria in 1769 to take up a new position as professor of chemistry and metallurgy at the Bergakademie Schemnitz (now Banská Štiavnica , Slovakia), which had become vacant when Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin left the University of Vienna. He held this position, endowed with 2000 guilders, until 1776. Here he married the Schemnitzer Caroline von Freyenau for the third time after the death of his second wife. From the marriage in 1773 there was a son, called Johann, who later became known as a statistician. Scopoli applied unsuccessfully for a new professorship in natural history at the University of Vienna, but the pharmacist Johann Jakob von Well was preferred to him.

In 1776 Scopoli moved to the University of Pavia , in what was then the Duchy of Milan, as a professor of chemistry and botany . There he soon got into a heated argument with his colleague Lazzaro Spallanzani , who, after initially working with him, accused him of stealing collection material. The material reappeared a little later, in Spallanzani's own house; However, the latter was able to avoid the allegation of theft by stating that he had only brought it there for sorting and identification. Out of anger at the loss of face, Spallanzani slipped a "gut worm" into his colleague he had made from chicken entrails. Scopoli fell for the fraud and published the “worm” under the name Physis intestinalis in his Deliciae florae et faunae Insubricae (...) . Spallanzani then made the hoax public in a work published under a pseudonym, exposing his competitors to ridicule. Scopoli, who had long been ailing and almost blind, did not survive the humiliation long; he died in Pavia in 1788. In the year of his death he published his autobiography "Vitae meae vices" in Latin.

Honors and memberships

The alkaloid scopolamine bears his name. The plant genus madness ( Scopolia Jacq. Corr. Link ) from the nightshade family (Solanaceae) was named after him.

Scopoli was a member of the Agricultural Society in Steyer, Görz and Gradiska .

Works

Scopoli published numerous scientific works, usually in Latin, many of which were translated into German during his lifetime.

His Flora carniolica , published in 1760, describes around 1,600 native plants, including 56 hitherto unknown. The 1763 published Entomologia carniolica is now considered the main work of entomology . In the years 1760 to 1775 Scopoli maintained a lively correspondence with Carl von Linné .

In the winter of 1760 he began to investigate the types of earth and ores with which the most benevolent creator had enriched the Idrian mercury mines, with the firm resolve to put them in the light at my expense, as has also happened. The resultant work Introduction to the Knowledge and Use of Fossils as a Systematic of Earths and Miners (minerals) he used as the basis for his lectures on the Elementae Metallurgiae dogmaticae and practicae .

  • De affectibus animi dissertatio physico-medica. Trent 1753.
  • Flora Carniolica. Edler von Trattner, Vienna 1760. 2nd edition Krauss, Vienna 1772.
  • Entomologia carniolica. Edler von Trattner, Vienna 1763.
  • Annus I – V historico-naturalis. Hilscher, Leipzig 1768–72 (contains first descriptions of animal species for scientific names still valid today; translated by Günther and Johann Valentin Meidinger 1770–81).
  • Introduction to the knowledge and use of the fossils. For the students. Verlag Johann Friedrich Hartknochs, Riga and Mietau 1769 (an early classification of minerals and rocks).
  • Notes from natural history. Leipzig 1770.
  • Treatise on the burning of coal. Vienna 1771.
  • De Hydrargyro Idriensi tentamina physico-chymico-medica. Jena, Leipzig 1771.
  • Price writing on the question of the causes of the lack of fertilizer in Görtz and Gradiska. Vienna 1771.
  • Dissertationes ad scientiam naturalem pertinentes. Gerle, Prague 1772.
  • Principia mineralogiæ systematicæ et practicæ succincte exhibentia structuram telluris. Gerle, Prague 1772.
  • Crystallographia Hungarica. Gerle, Prague 1776.
  • Fundamenta chemicae praelectionibus publicis accomodata. Gerle, Prague 1777.
  • Introductio ad historiam naturalem. Gerle, Prague 1777.
  • Principi di mineralogia. Venice 1778.
  • Fundamenta botanica. Wappler, Pavia, Vienna 1783–86.
  • The beginnings of metallurgy. Moeßle, Schwan & Götz, Vienna, Mannheim 1786–89.
  • Deliciae Florae et Faunae Insubricae. Salvatoris, Pavia 1786-88.
  • Elementi di chimica e di farmacia. Pavia 1786.
  • Physico-chemical treatise on Idrian mercury and vitriol. Lindauer, Munich 1786.
  • Treatise on bees and their care. Vienna 1787 (translated by Karl Meidinger).

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Giovanni Antonio Scopoli  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Otto Guglia (1972): Giovanni Antonio Scopoli (1723-1788). A scholarly life from the time of Maria Theresa. Researcher Krains - Linne Austria. State social policy pioneer. Introduction to the reprint of the 2nd edition of “Flora Carniolica” published by Johann Paul Krauss in Vienna in 1772: IIIXXXIII, 7tt. - Graz: Akad. Druck- u. Publishing house, quoted from F.Speta (2004): Austria's first entomologists: Nikolaus Poda (1723–1798) and Joannes Antonio Scopoli (1723–1788). Denisia 13: 567-618. Quote on p. 594
  2. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .
  3. ↑ Joh. Ant. Scopoli: Introduction to the knowledge and use of the fossils. For the students. Riga and Mietau. 1769, preface p. * 3 / reverse, * 4
  4. ↑ Scopoli . In: Universal Lexicon of the Present and Past . 4., reworked. and strongly increased edition, Volume 15:  Säugethiere – Sicilicus , self-published, Altenburg 1862, p.  704 .
personal data
SURNAME Scopoli, Giovanni Antonio
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Scopoli, Johann Anton; Scopoli, Joannes Antonius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian doctor and naturalist
DATE OF BIRTH June 13, 1723
PLACE OF BIRTH Cavalese
DATE OF DEATH May 8, 1788
Place of death Pavia