Marcello Malpighi (1628–1694)

The Italian biologist and physician Marcello Malpighi was born on 10 March 1628 in Crevalcore, near Bologna, in what is now northern Italy. He was educated at the University of Bologna, where he matriculated in 1646, and where he studied with Francesco Natali, Bartolomeo Massari, and Andrea Mariani. After graduating as doctor of medicine and philosophy in 1653, he practised as a physician in Bologna, while also lecturing on logic at the university. In 1656, he moved to Pisa, where he took up the chair of theoretical medicine.

In 1661, Malpighi brought out De pulmonibus, a publication that took the form of two short letters to the mathematician Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (1608–1679) in which he discussed his work on lungs. Four years later he published a series of treatises (1665–6) setting out his investigations into the structures of the brain and of the tongue. His work on blood, De polypo cordis, appeared in 1666, and he published a work on embryology, De formatione, nine years later in 1675. His microscopic study of plant anatomy Anatome plantarum was published to acclaim in 1675 and 1679, and his research on glands and the structure of glandular system was published under the title De structura glandularum congloratarum consimiliumque partium in London in 1688.

From 1662, Malpighi served as professor of medicine at the University of Messina, a position for which he was recommended by Borelli. He returned regularly throughout his life to Bologna, however, where he continued to practise as a physician. In 1667, at the invitation of Henry Oldenburg, he began corresponding with the Royal Society of London and two years later he was elected Fellow. In 1691, Malpighi was elected to the Accademia degli Arcadi and between that year and 1694, he served as chief physician to Pope Innocent XII in Rome, where he was appointed Protomedico. He died in Rome on 30 November 1694.