BOFFITO, GIUSEPPE
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Volume II · p. 1013 · 1949
English translation · Testo originale italiano
BOFFITO, GIUSEPPE. – Barnabite. Scholar, historian of science, Dante scholar, erudite, b. at Gavi (Alessandria) on 3 July 1869, d. at Florence in the college “Alla Querce” on 16 July 1944. He completed his studies among the Barnabites and took a degree in letters (1869). He taught Italian and history in the colleges of his Order, first at Moncalieri, then for forty years at Florence, also directing their respective meteorological observatories. Following the restless “nature of his spirit,” as he wrote of himself, he ranged as historian, critic, and bibliographer over the fields of literature (especially Dante studies and philology), history, and various sciences, above all meteorology and aviation. He produced noteworthy studies on the “book” and on typographic art. Yet his gifts as an erudite shone most in his monumental works of bibliography on aeronautics, Galileo, and his own Order.
He belonged to many academies, including the Pontifical Academy of the New Lincei and the Accademia della Crusca. He collaborated on some forty literary and scientific journals.
BIBL.: Works: Scrittori Barnabiti, biography, bibliography, iconography (Biblioteca barnabitica), 4 vols., Florence 1933–37. In vol. I (pp. 242–57) and vol. IV (pp. 340–41), autobiographical note listing 130 works and more than 6,000 items from 1897 to 1935; to these must be added later publications up to 1943, the principal ones being: Saggi di un commento scientifico alla Div. Comm., 1936, in-4°, pp. 23; Bibliografia cronologica dell’aeronautica italiana da Leonardo al 1875 (pp. 87–167), in the work: T. Caproni–Guasti–A. Bertarelli: L’aeronautica italiana nell’immagine, 1487–1875, Milan 1938, pp. 184 in-fol.; Vocabolario bio-bibliografico: di G. Fumagalli, ed. by G. Boffito and G. De Bernard, Florence 1940, in-8°, pp. 450; Bibliografia gallicana (1866–1940), Supplement to the Bibliografia galileiana of A. Carli and A. Favaro, Rome 1942; Biblioteca aeronautica italiana illustrata, followed by Primo supplemento decennale (1927–36), Florence 1929 and 1937. – Studies: F. M. Parenti, G. B. L’uomo, le opere, 1947.
