SPALLANZANI, LAZZARO. - Born Sept. 12, 1729 at Scandiano (Reggio Emilia), died Feb. 12, 1799 at Pavia. After grammar studies at Scandiano he completed his studies of philosophy at Reggio, under the Jesuits; in 1747 he moved to Bologna to study jurisprudence there, in accordance with his father's wish.
Meanwhile he began to frequent the salon of the celebrated Laura Bassi, and, having fallen in love with scientific studies, he managed to obtain his father's permission to follow his genius. He did not, however, neglect the Italian, Latin and Greek languages, so much so that in 1755 (he had meanwhile taken the habit of the Priests of Mary; he also received the major Orders, but it is not known when) he went to teach logic, metaphysics and Greek at the College of Reggio (the ancient Seminary); in the same city, two years later, he held the chair of physics and mathematics at the University (founded in 1753). In 1763 he moved to Modena, where he taught Greek and mathematics at the College of St. Charles, and physics and philosophy at the University; in 1769 he was called to the chair of zoology at the University of Pavia, which he held until his death, refusing invitations from other cities, including Padua and Paris.
His most important researches are in animal biology, among them the famous Saggio di osservazioni microscopiche concernenti il sistema dei Signori di Needham e Buffon (Modena 1765), with which he entered the field decisively against the theory of spontaneous generation, to which essay he later added new experiments and facts in the Lettere (1767) and in the Prolusione (1770); in 1776, in the first vol. of the Opuscoli di vita animale e vegetale, he took up and coordinated the whole question, rebutting many opposing arguments. In the second of these opuscoli he sets out a long series of researches on the spermatozoa of man and of vertebrates, and in the second vol. of the Dissertazioni he studies fertilization in many animals and the development of the egg, and sets out fine experiments on artificial fertilization (which he also obtained in the dog). It is curious to note that despite these experiments, with which he proved the necessity of fertilizing sperm for the development of eggs, he was an ovist preformationist, that is, he held that the future being is already preformed in the egg of animals. And he sought to study the question in plants as well, but without notable results. Another field of study for him was that of regenerations; as early as 1768, at Modena, Spallanzani had published a Prodromo di un'opera da imprimersi sulle riproduzioni degli animali, but only in 1783 did the Risultati di esperienze sopra la riproduzione della testa nelle lumache terrestri appear, which still does not represent the definitive conclusion of the researches, never published. Nevertheless his assertion that snails are capable of regenerating the head caused a great stir and a whole flowering of criticisms and counter-criticisms, so much so that in 1768 the Academy of France appointed a special commission, which fully confirmed "this new miracle of natural history." It was then that Spallanzani uttered the famous saying: "to experiment in any way is everyone's trade; to experiment properly was and always will be the trade of few." He also carried out researches on the circulation; he discovered the capillary circulation both in cold-blooded and in warm-blooded animals; he demonstrated the contractility of the arterial bulb in the frog; the non-existence of air bubbles in the circulating blood, and he also saw the white corpuscles, which however he did not interpret correctly. Another of his scientific monuments was the research on digestion and on respiration, the latter published posthumously by Jean Senebier, librarian of Geneva (Memorie sulla respirazione, Milan 1803), confirming experimentally and brilliantly the hypothesis of Lagrange and establishing the doctrine of the internal respiration of the tissues.
Among the minor works mention should be made of the accounts of his scientific travels: 1781, 1782 and 1783 along the coasts of the Tyrrhenian and the Adriatic, with observations on the "plant-animals" or zoophytes (pennatulids, madrepores, gorgonians, corals, whose animal nature he maintains) and on geology and paleontology; 1785 to Constantinople, with observations in the most varied branches of science, from mineralogy to meteorology, from zoology to the history of the customs of the peoples visited; in the Two Sicilies, with descriptions of the ascents of Etna and Vesuvius and of the volcanic phenomena (1788-89); in the Modenese Apennines, where he described the salse of Reggio di Querzola, the fires of Barigazzo and the petroleum of Monte Zirbio (1792). Note should also be taken of the letters on the suspicion of a new sense in bats (Turin 1794), in which he studies the faculty of orientation of these animals even in the dark and deprived of various senses (sight, smell); the researches on the electricity of torpedoes, of which he described the falcate muscle and its nervous connections; on the reproduction of eels, an age-old problem not completely solved, and on the reviviscence of the little animals of the mosses of roofs (Rotifers and Tardigrades) after desiccation.
Spallanzani was rightly called the "Galileo of biology," and his writings also reveal a rare grammatical sense and a notable pleasantness of style, for which they remain magnificent examples of scientific research.