AMICI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA. — Italian physicist, astronomer, mathematician, and biologist, b. 1786, d. 1863. Brilliant for his introduction of the immersion objective (1840), later perfected by Abbe, and for his discovery of the germination of the pollen grain on the stigma, the path of the pollen tube into the ovule, fertilization, and the origin of the embryo in phanerogams (1822–39).
The author was a complete Catholic.
Bibl.: F. Palermo, in Bull. di bibliografia e di storia delle scienze matematiche e fisiche, published by B. Boncompagni, (1870), p. 220; F. Auerbach, Ernst Abbe, Leipzig 1918, p. 274 sq.; G. Briosi, Atti dell'Istituto botanico di Pavia, 1, 2a XI (1908); (Memorie, 39), Pisa 1928.