Historical and Commemorative
Medals
Collection of Benjamin Weiss
LUIGI FERDINANDO MARSIGLI, FOUNDATION OF THE INSTITUTE
OF SCIENCE OF BOLOGNA ST URBAIN, Ferdinand de: Italy, 1731, Bronze, 60 mm Count Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli (1658-1730) was a naturalist as well as an Italian soldier and scientific writer. He was born and studied in Bologna, and although he did not complete his formal schooling, he accumulated a vast knowledge of history, politics, geography, and the natural sciences. As a young man in Rome, he was employed by Queen Christina (of Sweden). Later he traveled through Turkey, collecting data on military organization and natural history. Marsigli served under Emperor Leopold and fought with distinction against the Turks. In 1679 he was appointed Venetian ambassador in Constantinople and was held by the Turks as a prisoner in the 1680s. Subsequently he took part in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). He was court-marshaled after surrendering to the Duke of Burgundy but later was acquitted of blame. Marsigli devoted a good part of his life to scientific investigations. Among his other interests, he appears to have been a born cartographer, mapping everything he dealt with. He left behind a collection of more than a thousand maps, many of them his own work. He also undertook the exploration of the structure of mountains and the natural condition of the sea, lakes, and rivers, and in 1724 he published the first treatise on oceanography, Histoire physique de la mer. Indeed, Marsigli is considered the founding father of modern oceanography. In 1712 he founded the Academia delle Scienze dell'Istituto di Bologna, which under his influence, immediately became an active center of scientific research, consisting mainly of the exploration of the natural history of the area around Bologna. Marsigli gave his vast collection and his house to the city, where it formed the nucleus of the Bologna Institute of Science, founded in 1714, which is depicted on the reverse of this medal. LINK to Biography and Portrait of Marsigli (from wikipedia)
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