Prospero Alpini

Próspero Alpini, also known as Alpino, Prosper Alpinus, Prospero Alpino and Prosper Alpin (Maróstica, November 23, 1553-Padua, February 6, 1617), was an Italian botanist and doctor.

Biography

Alpini was born in Marostica, near Vicenza, in the Republic of Venice. In his youth he served in the Milanese army, but in 1574 he decided to study medicine in Padua. Once he finished his studies in 1578, he began practicing the medical profession in Camposampiero, a small country in the territory of Padua. But his true passion was botany and, in order to study and learn about exotic plants, in 1580 he moved to Egypt as a doctor in the personal service of Giorgio Emo, the Venetian consul in Cairo.

He spent three years in that country, and from the cultivation of the date palm, Alpini deduced the concept of sexual difference in plants, which was immediately adopted as the basis of Linnaeus' scientific classification system.. He stated that "the female date palm does not produce the fruit unless we put a male branch mixed with the female ones, and that the pollen produced by the male flowers mates with the female flower."

On his return home, he lived for a time in Genoa as Andrea Doria's doctor, and in 1593 he was professor of Botany in Padua, where he died in 1617 due to kidney failure. When his position became vacant, it was filled by his son, Alpino Alpini. His most famous work De Plantis Aegypti liber Venice, 1592. The first reference to the coffee plant published in Europe is contained in the De Medicina Egyptiorum Venice, 1591.

Honors

Eponyms

The genus Alpinia of the family Zingiberaceae, was named by Linnaeus in his honor.

• The abbreviation "Alpino" is used to indicate Prospero Alpini as an authority in the description and scientific classification of vegetables.

Works

• From balsamo dialogueus. 1591
• De Medicina Egyptiorum Venice. 1591
• From Plantis Aegypti liber. Venedig, F. de Franceschi di Siena, Venice. 1592
• De praesagienda via et morte aegrotantium libri septem. In quibus ars tota Hippocratica praedicendi in aegrotis varios morborum eventus, cum ex veterum medicorum dogmatis, tum ex longa accurataque observatione, nova methodo elucescit. Cum praefatione Hermanni Boerhaave. Editio altera Leidensis, cujus Textum recensuit, passim emendavit, supplevit, citata Hippocratis loca accuravit, Hieron. Dav. Gaubius... Cum capitum & rerum duplici index. Lugduni Bat. ex officina Isaaci Severini, . 1601
• Methodical medicine 1611
• From plantis exoticis libri duo.... Venice, Giovanni Guerigli, 1629. (This book describes 145 plants, of which a large part of Cretan origin)
• Historiæ Ægypti Naturalis. Pars Prima. Qua continentur Rerum Ægyptiarum. [Pars Second, Sive, of Plantis Ægypti. Cum observationibus. Lugduni Bat.: apud Gerardum Potuliet, 1735