Ulisse Aldrovandi

Timeline

1. 1548–1560Bologna · BolognaIn 1548 he abandoned law and went to Padua to study philosophy, mathematics, and medicine. In 1549 he met Luca Ghini in Bologna and resolved to devote himself to natural objects; the same year, accused of heresy, he made a public penance in the Basilica of San Petronio and was summoned to Rome for retrial, being pardoned after the accession of Julius III. In Rome he met the French physician Rondelet, began collecting fish specimens, and examined antiquities. He received his degrees in medicine and philosophy in 1553, taught logic from 1554, and also taught botany from 1556 to 1561.
2. 1561–1577Bologna · BolognaIn 1561 the university created a chair of natural philosophy especially for him, where he lectured on fossils, plants, and animals until 1600. To house living plants, in 1568 he obtained the use of the city hall garden and founded Bologna's first botanical garden (Italy's fifth), managing it personally for decades. He also expanded his herbarium and 'microcosm of nature' collections. From 1574 to 1575 he was suspended for about five years following a conflict with apothecaries over his Antidotarium; only in 1577, after his mother's relative, Pope Gregory XIII, wrote to the city authorities, did he regain his office and publishing subsidies.
3. 1599–1605Bologna · BolognaAround 1600, nearing eighty, he reduced his teaching duties to concentrate on publishing his accumulated manuscripts. From 1599 to 1603 he published Ornithology in volumes, along with Entomology; the volumes on fish, quadrupeds, and minerals were largely completed posthumously by his pupils. Childless, he made a will in 1603 donating some eighteen thousand natural and antiquarian specimens, seven thousand herbarium sheets, and numerous watercolors and woodcuts to the Bolognese Senate, transforming a private cabinet of curiosities into a public civic collection.