Giovanni Battista Brocchi

Giovanni Battista Brocchi, also called Giambattista, was an Italian naturalist, mineralogist and geologist, born at Bassano del Grappa in 1772. He studied jurisprudence at the University of Padua but turned to mineralogy and botany, became professor of botany at the new lyceum of Brescia in 1802, and was later made inspector of mines in the Kingdom of Italy. His most important work, the Conchiologia fossile subapennina of 1814, gave details of the structure of the Apennines and an account of the marine shell fossils of the Italian Tertiary strata compared with living species. In 1814 he presented the thesis that species, like individuals, age and eventually die out, an idea that later influenced Charles Darwin. He also corrected Scipione Breislak on the volcanic materials of Rome in 1820, sailed for Egypt in 1823 to explore its geology, and died at Khartoum in 1826.