Giuseppe Saverio Poli

Giuseppe Saverio Poli (26 October 17467 April 1825) was an Italian physicist, biologist and natural historian.

His collections, together with those stored in the Royal Bourbon Museum, were the foundation of the Zoological Museum of Naples. The specimens were from locations all over the world, and included especially, Lepidoptera, Cnidaria and Mollusca.

Thanks to his many travels, which put him in contact and correspondence with authoritative exponents of the international scientific world, he published numerous essays on various topics: not only relating to physics, but also to meteorology, in particular with the treatises on thunder (1772) and on lightning (1773), geology and zoology. Testimony of this last discipline remains the monumental Testacea utriusque Siciliae eorumque historia et antome tabulis aeneis illustrata, a description of the molluscs of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, begun with the help of his assistant Stefano Delle Chiaje, who collaborated in its publication. Poli was responsible for the discovery of the interradial vesicles of the water vascular system of echinoderms, which are known as "Polian vesicles".

He also tried his hand at poetry, with hymns and poems, of which the Celestial Journey, composed in two volumes, in 1805 provides a good example. He was a member of numerous scientific and cultural institutions, including the National Academy of Sciences. After a year in which his health deteriorated, Poli died in Naples on 7 April 1825. His personal collection of natural history objects and archaeological artefacts, amassed since the 1770s, was known by his friends as the Museo Poliano. They included minerals, fossils, mollusc shells, corals, sponges, insects (including a fine collection from Surinam), weapons, clothing, indigenous tools, paintings and scientific instruments. The more valuable items in the collection were looted by French troops during the conquest of Naples in 1806, and he later turned to collecting coins, medals and antiquities. After his death, these were curated by Delle Chiaie and acquired by the Royal Bourbon Museum and, along with his natural history collection, formed the foundation of the Zoological Museum of Naples.

Works

Riflessioni intorno agli effetti di alcuni fulmini, Campo, Napoli 1773.

Breve saggio sulla calamita e sulla sua virtù medicinale, Stamperia Reale, Palermo 1811.

Works about Giuseppe Saverio Poli