Scopoli, Joannis Antonii (1723-1788)

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Giovanni Antonio Scopoli (sometimes Latinized as Johannes Antonius Scopoli) (June 3, 1723 – May 8, 1788) was a Italian end physician and naturalist.

Scopoli was born at Cavalese in the Val di Fiemme of Tyrol, the son of a lawyer of Italian descent. He obtained a degree in medicine at University of Innsbruck, and practiced as a doctor in Cavalese and Venice.Much of his time was spent in the Alps, collecting plants and insects, of which he made outstanding collections. He spent two years as private secretary to the Count of Seckan, and then was appointed as physician of the mercury mines in Idrija, a small town in the Habsburg realm, remaining there for sixteen years. In 1761, he published De Hydroargyro Idriensi Tentamina on the symptoms of mercury poisoning among mercury miners.

Scopoli spent time studying the local natural history, publishing Flora Carniolica (1760) as well as a major work on the insects of Carniola, Entomologia Carniolica (1763). He also published a series of Anni Historico-Naturales (1769-72), which included first descriptions of birds from various collections.

TAXONOMIC PUBLICATIONS

 * Scopoli, J. A. 1763. Entomologia carniolica exhibens insecta Carnioliae indigena et distributa in ordines, genera, species, varietates. Methodo Linnaeana. Vindobonae [=Vienna]: J. Trattner, xxxvi + 420 pp.

REFERENCE

 * Ferrari, M. & A. Vadagnini. 1973. Natura Alpina 24: 283-303, portrait.