Editing Lazzaro Spallanzani (section)

==Biography==
[[File:Monumento a Lazzaro Spallanzani.jpg|thumb|The statue of Spallanzani in Scandiano has him examining a frog through a magnifying glass.]]
[[File:Spallata Capata.JPG|thumb|Plaque dedicated to Spallanzani in [[Portovenere]], Italy]]
[[File:Spallanzani - Dissertazioni di fisica animale e vegetabile, 1780 - 4275441.tif|thumb|''Dissertazioni di fisica animale e vegetabile'', 1780]]
Spallanzani was born in [[Scandiano]] in the modern [[province of Reggio Emilia]] to Gianniccolo Spallanzani and Lucia Zigliani. His father, a lawyer by profession, was not impressed with young Spallanzani who spent more time with small animals than studies. With financial support from the Vallisnieri Foundation, his father enrolled him in the [[Society of Jesus|Jesuit]] Seminary at age 15. When he was asked to join the order, he declined. Persuaded by his father and with the help of Monsignor Castelvetro, the [[Bishop]] of Reggio, he studied law at the [[University of Bologna]], which he gave up soon and turned to science. Here, his famous kinswoman, [[Laura Bassi]], was a professor of physics and it is to her influence that his scientific impulse has been usually attributed. With her, he studied [[natural philosophy]] and [[mathematics]], and gave also great attention to languages, both ancient and modern, but soon abandoned them. It took him a good friend Antonio Vallisnieri Jr. to convince his father to drop law as a career and take up academics instead.<ref name="ariatti">{{cite journal |last1=Ariatti |first1=Annalisa |last2=Mandrioli |first2=Paolo |title=Lazzaro spallanzani: A blow against spontaneous generation |journal=Aerobiologia |date=1993 |volume=9 |issue=2–3 |pages=101–107 |doi=10.1007/BF02066251 |bibcode=1993Aerob...9..101A |s2cid=84101575 }}</ref>

In 1754, at the age of 25, soon after he was ordained he became professor of [[logic]], [[metaphysics]] and [[Greek language|Greek]] in the [[University of Modena and Reggio Emilia|University of Reggio]].<ref name="CE" /> In 1763, he was moved to the [[University of Modena and Reggio Emilia|University of Modena]],<ref name="museo" /> where he continued to teach with great assiduity and success, but devoted his whole leisure to natural science. There he also served as a priest of the Congregation Beata Vergine and S. Carlo.<ref name="ariatti"/> He declined many offers from other Italian universities and from [[St Petersburg]] until 1768, when he accepted the invitation of [[Maria Theresa of Austria|Maria Theresa]] to the chair of natural history in the [[University of Pavia]], which was then being reorganized.<ref name="CE" /> He also became director of the museum, which he greatly enriched by the collections of his many journeys along the shores of the [[Mediterranean Sea]].<ref name="EB1911" /> In June 1768 Spallanzani was elected a [[Fellow of the Royal Society]] and in 1775 was elected a foreign member of the [[Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences]].{{citation needed|date=November 2020}}

In 1785 he was invited to [[University of Padua]], but to retain his services his sovereign doubled his salary and allowed him leave of absence for a visit to [[Turkey]], where he remained nearly a year and made many observations, among which may be noted those of a copper mine in [[Heybeliada|Chalki]] and of an iron mine at [[Büyükada|Principi]]. His return home was almost a triumphal progress: at [[Vienna]] he was cordially received by [[Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor|Joseph II]] and on reaching [[Pavia]] he was met with acclamations outside the city gates by the students of the university. During the following year, his students exceeded five hundred. While he was travelling in the Balkans and to Constantinople, his integrity in the management of the museum was called in question (he was accused of the theft of specimens from the university's collection to add to his own cabinet of curiosities), with letters written across Europe to damage Spallanzani's reputation. A judicial investigation speedily cleared his honour to the satisfaction of some of his accusers.<ref name="EB1911" /> But Spallanzani got his revenge on his principal accuser, [[Giovanni Antonio Scopoli]], by preparing a fake specimen of a new "species". When Scopoli published the remarkable specimen, Spallanzani revealed the joke, resulting in wide ridicule and humiliation.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Gigli Berzolari |first1=Alberto |title=Alessandro Volta and the Scientific Culture between 1750 and 1850 |date=2000 |publisher=Istituto lombardo di scienze e lettere |location=Milan |page=300}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Nosengo |first1=Nicola |title=Rivalry and Revenge |journal=Nature |date=2005 |volume=434 |issue=142 |page=142 |doi=10.1038/434142a |bibcode=2005Natur.434..142N |url=https://www.nature.com/articles/434142a |access-date=10 February 2024}}</ref>

In 1796, Spallanzani received an offer for professor at the [[National Museum of Natural History, France]] in Paris, but declined due to his age. He died from bladder cancer on 12 February 1799, in Pavia. After his death, his bladder was removed for study by his colleagues, after which it was placed on public display in a museum in Pavia, where it remains to this day.

His indefatigable exertions as a traveller, his skill and good fortune as a collector, his brilliance as a teacher and expositor, and his keenness as a controversialist no doubt aid largely in accounting for Spallanzani's exceptional fame among his contemporaries; his letters account for his close relationships with many famed scholars and philosophers, like [[Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon]], [[Lavoisier]], and [[Voltaire]]. Yet greater qualities were by no means lacking. His life was one of incessant eager questioning of nature on all sides, and his many and varied works all bear the stamp of a fresh and original genius, capable of stating and solving problems in all departments of science—at one time finding the true explanation of [[stone skipping]] (formerly attributed to the elasticity of water) and at another helping to lay the foundations of our modern [[volcanology]] and [[meteorology]].<ref name="EB1911" />