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This essay surveys the situation of Italian women life scientists from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. It follows the path that took women from being an exceptional presence to becoming a common, yet not equal, presence in the Italian science departments. Very different proportions of women occupied the three ranks in the academic hierarchy—students, research staff and professors. From the late nineteenth century onwards, women started to enrol in Italian universities. Initially, the second most popular department among female students—outdone only by the humanities—was that of mathematics, physics and natural sciences. Concerning women among research staff, a brief statistical analysis reveals the growing proportion of the female workforce in academic institutions and brings into view poorly known female assistants and technicians. The most difficult career step for women was to gain a tenured university position. A comparison between bacteriologist Giuseppina Cattani’s ‘failure’ to gain such a position and the ultimately successful strategy of zoologist and limnologist Rina Monti, who became one of the very first female university professors in Europe, illustrates the opportunities as well as the obstacles women naturalists encountered on the way into the academia. These experiences and those of others show that well into the twentieth century the support of powerful male mentors continued to be indispensable for women scientists. Positions in peripheral institutes or specializations in emerging research fields, in particular hydrobiology, entomology and cytogenetics, provided opportunities for Italian women to work their way up to professorships.

In the second half of the 19th century, Giulio Bizzozero was the central figure of the modernization of biomedical studies in Turin, and perhaps in Italy. He made discoveries with remarkable medical implications and published research papers that gained international praise. By doing so, Bizzozero could withstand the attacks of the local medical hierarchies and succeed in establishing a new medical philosophy and a prolific school of experimental and cellular pathology. He published only two coauthored papers on nerves, yet exerted a considerable influence on the neurohistological works of his students and collaborators, including Camillo Golgi and his grandnephew Aldo Perroncito. This chapter will first illustrate Bizzozero’s efforts to reform medical research and education in Turin, and then briefly sketch his main scientific achievements. The second part describes Perroncito’s groundbreaking investigations of the regeneration of the peripheral nerve fibers.

This chapter examines the interplay of plants and politics in Padua from the vantage point of the socio-economic theories that circulated in Padua during the first half of the nineteenth century and that were reflected in Andrea Meneghini’s social vision. In particular, this chapter focuses on the philosophies of Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) and Domenico Romagnosi (1761–1853) and on the diffusion of historicism, organicism, mutualism, transformism, and progressivism and on the use of vegetal imagery in these contexts. During the period under consideration, economics and political economy were emerging as autonomous disciplines and their discourses often were still part of general reflections about natural processes. Many scholars of the political and economic sciences of this period reacted to the apparently perfectly organized and functioning living nature, adopting—or rejecting—this as a model of harmonious interaction in the hoped-for administrative and societal order. In contrast to other recent scholars, who maintain that enlightened and mechanist-physicist thought remained influential in Northern Italy, I argue that an ‘organicist switch’ took place during the 1820s and 1830s that was also a ‘botanical switch’, as shown by the adoption of several vegetal and organic metaphors.

This chapter describes the youth and the education of Andrea and Giuseppe Meneghini and sheds light on public and private schooling in Padua in the 1830s and 1840s. The influence of religion and of members of the clergy as teachers on the educational sector as well as on the intellectual life and the revolutionary events of 1848 is of special importance. Two abbots had a particular impact on the Meneghini brothers. The first, Pietro Melo, introduced the brothers to botanical techniques. His scientific approach to the phenomenon of the ‘bleeding polenta’ that troubled many peasants reveals the enlightened facets of his character. The second, Giuseppe Bernardi, a fatherly tutor, was a central, though hitherto almost completely overlooked figure in Padua’s cultural and scientific life during the 1830s and 1840s. His philosophy harbors strong commitment to the doctrines of the philosophers Antonio Rosmini and Giambattista Vico. The final section focuses on the rocky path both brothers had to follow, after the bankruptcy of their father, to find their place in Padua’s society.

This chapter describes the events and consequences of Padua’s 1848 revolution. As prominent figures in Padua’s intellectual and social life, Andrea and Giuseppe Meneghini were deeply involved in the construction of a new order. After the Austrian retreat, Andrea became head of the revolutionary administration; yet when the Habsburg troops returned a few months later, both brothers and many of their peers were forced into exile. Andrea Cittadella Vigodarzere and Achille De Zigno stayed in Padua, hoping to mediate between the city of Padua and the enraged Austrian government. A long period of repression and isolation followed. Only Andrea returned sixteen years later to become Padua’s first mayor after the annexation of Veneto to the Italian kingdom. Giuseppe, relying on the support of his Italo-Austrian botanical network, settled in Pisa where he became professor of Geology. For Padua, the failure of the 1848 revolution meant the end of many projects of social and scientific innovation as well as the inevitable end of a period of extraordinary cross-fertilization between plant knowledge and the city’s emerging civil society.

This chapter complements the preceding one by comparing the prevailing socio-economic beliefs in Padua to the biological-anatomical views of Paduan botanists. It focuses on Giuseppe Meneghini’s research on the brain and on algae above all. Giuseppe was a pioneer of cell theory, yet his ideas differ significantly from those of other European savants of his time. Cell theory marked an anatomical revolution, because it added a new dimension to discussions of the constitution of living bodies, in particular the relationship between parts and wholes. Meneghini articulated a concept of cooperation between all parts, rejecting the idea of dominance of ‘higher’ over ‘lower’ entities. These conceptions foreshadow the introduction of metaphors like the ‘republic of cells’. A second important shift in Meneghini’s biological thought, paralleled by the emerging historicism among the students of the humanities and by Vico’s concept of perfectioning, can be found in his view of development. Giuseppe thought of living beings as products of time and as connected by historical ties, a conception that places him squarely among the ranks of pre-Darwinian evolutionists. The final section emphasizes Meneghini’s role as promoter of cellular and developmental ideas among the members of his local, regional, and international botanical networks.

This chapter introduces the Meneghini family, in particular Agostino Meneghini, father of the two protagonists of this book. Previously, we knew almost nothing about him, though he presents an interesting case of social ascent. Coming from a modest background, Agostino acquired considerable wealth and cleverly integrated his family into the ranks of Padua’s elite. His purchase of villa Meneghini and his marriage politics shed light on the social norms of the early nineteenth century and on the values and views he shared with most influential figures. Andrea and Giuseppe Meneghini grew up in this environment. That they were simultaneously social climbers and an integral part of the elite explains why both later adhered to a partly similar, partly different social philosophy. Both therefore are representative of but also reveal idiosyncrasies in the multilayered reality of the Padua of the period. In addition, this chapter illustrates the role of plants and flowers in Padua’s high society.

This chapter provides an introduction of the world of Paduan sociality and, in particular, its emerging associationism. Associations were the principal way civil society expressed itself in Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century. An inquiry into their composition and activities identifies the members of Padua’s politically most active moderate circles and gives insight into the modes of networking and lobbying of many of the leaders of the 1848 revolution, including the two Meneghini brothers. The examples of the Gardening Society and of the Botanical Garden show that in Padua, as in the rest of Europe, science was tightly intertwined with other realms of social and intellectual life. Moreover, they illustrate the crucial role of gardens and plants as a ‘glue’ that held together the social elite, but also as a meeting place that blurred the boundaries of gender and social rank, more than any other institution of that time. Section 2.4 focuses on the Istituto Veneto and the Congresses of Italian scientists, which took place between 1839 and 1847, and argues that botany and science played a fundamental role in Padua’s desire to gain political influence at the regional level and in its relationships with the Austrian authorities.

This chapter illustrates the role of flowers in Paduan culture, politics, and the economy. During the first half of the nineteenth century, the interest in plants of many prominent figures in the city’s social and intellectual elite was more than a temporary fashion or a social convention, but an expression of a long-standing tradition. A focus on the floral exhibitions of the late 1840s highlights a love for plants, but also several significant socio-political features and trends of the time. Even more than the Gardening Society, the Festival of Flowers transgressed regional, social, and gender boundaries. It saw the active participation of many women and of plant lovers from other provinces and regions. The attendance of many Austrian officials together with their wives suggests a close relationship between Veneto’s social elite and the subjects of ‘flower emperor’ Francis I. On the other hand, the growing number of participants from the lower classes reveals that important social and economic changes were underway. Flowers ceased to be objects by means of which the nobility set itself apart. In addition, the increasing attraction of flowers created new markets, which were readily supplied by a growing number of floricultural industries.

This paper aims to illustrate the influence of Franz Unger’s (1800–1870) and Carl Wilhelm Nägeli’s (1817–1891) anatomical and developmental works on Gregor Mendel’s (1822–1884) use of numerical ratios in biological inquiry. All hypotheses concerning Mendel’s sources of inspiration have hitherto overlooked the cytological teaching of Unger, his professor of botany. In the 1830s and 1840s, he was a pioneer of cell theory. His publications, including his university textbooks, are characterised by a particulate and quantifying approach towards vital phenomena. Special attention will be paid to Unger’s and Nägeli’s ‘law of plant growth’, which shows some striking basic correspondences with Mendel’s approach. This demonstrates, firstly, that mathematical thinking was not alien to mid-nineteenth century botany, and secondly, that Mendel’s conceptions were influenced by an even greater variety of ideas circulating around 1850.

In this essay I discuss the contents and the context of Italian zoologist and entomologist Carlo Emery's discussion of the germ-plasm theory. August Weismann considered him one of his very few creditable supporters, and encouraged him to publish his theoretical reflections. In his Gedanken zur Descendenz- und Vererbungstheorie, which appeared between 1893 and 1903 as a series of five essays in the journal Biologisches Zentralblatt, Emery developed a very personal account, applying the concept of determinants to problems like atavism, sexual dimorphism, speciation, geographical isolation, transmission of characters, and putting forward, as early as 1903, the idea of a genetic program.

From the late nineteenth century onwards, the phenomena of vision and the anatomy and physiology of the eye of marine animals induced many zoologists, ethologists, physiologists, anatomists, biochemists, and ophthalmologists to travel to the Zoological Station in Naples. Initially, their preferred research objects were fish, but it soon became evident that cephalopods have particular features which make them particularly suited to research. After the first studies, which outlined the anatomical structure of cephalopods’ eyes and optic nerves, the research rapidly shifted to the electrophysiology and biochemistry of vision. In the twentieth century these results were integrated with behavioral tests and training techniques. Between 1909 and 1913 also the well-known debate on color vision between ophthalmologist Carl von Hess and zoologist Karl von Frisch took place in Naples. Largely unknown is that the debate also concerned cephalopods. A comparative historical analysis of these studies shows how different experimental devices, theoretical frameworks, and personal factors gave rise to two diametrically opposing views.

Hugo von Mohl (1805–1872) – German botanist and microscopist – was one of the central figures in the emerging fields of plant anatomy and physiology. His most famous contributions concerned the plant cell, in particular the cell wall and cell division, and the origin of plant vessels from cells. These studies paved the way for cell theory. Moreover, he greatly engaged in the transformation of botany into an inductive science and promoted its institutional autonomy from medicine as well as from philosophy, co-founding in Tubingen Germany's first faculty of natural sciences. Keywords: history of botany; cytology; cell wall; cytokinesis; microscopy; osmosis

Although egg cells are visible to the naked eye, the history of cell biology is closely coupled to that of microscopy. In nearly 350 years, cell research has produced an extraordinary rich panorama of studies, concepts and representations. Robert Hooke's 1665 analogy to monk cells, the transition from ‘cellular tissue’ to single ‘cells’ around the year 1800, Schleiden and Schwann's identification of the cell as the elementary unit of life, the prominent status it gained during cytology's expansion to the other fields of biomedical inquiry, Schultze's definition as ‘a clump of protoplasm containing a nucleus’, the worlds of endocellular and ultrastructural organization, the ‘compartimentalization’ of the cell in the 1950s and 1960s, its role as map for biochemical and molecular research, all these are just few of the many historical answers to the question ‘what is a cell and what is it good for?’. Key concepts: For the beginning of cell biology as a new research field it was not sufficient to be merely able to see cells. The development of cell biology was coupled with the evolution of optical instruments and of anatomical theory. One indispensable prerequisite for the formulation of the first cell theory was the shift from the concept of cellular tissue to that of cells as single units. Cell research underwent ‘golden ages’ whenever cells were considered the basic units of life. Many outstanding life scientists did not attribute central importance to cells. The study of cells was (and still is) extraordinarily rich in different ways of seeing, describing, depicting and conceiving. Though it originated from a specific theory, the history of cell biology is characterized by its growing independence from general theory. Throughout its history cell biology was characterized by its ability to expand into neighbouring research fields and to integrate their concepts and methods. Keywords: cell biology; cytoplasm; organelles; cell membrane; cell division; microscopy

Edmund Beecher Wilson is generally celebrated for his contribution to chromosome theory and genetics, whereas opinion concerning his cytological thinking is often restricted to the idea that he provided evidence for the dominant role of the nucleus. But Wilson's cell theory was much more. It was a child of the German Zellforschung, and its attempt to provide a comprehensive cellular answer to a wide range of biological and physiological questions. Wilson developed a corpuscular, micromeristic and preformistic concept, and treated the cell as an organism subject to ontogenetic and phylogenetic processes. He defended his comprehensive theory even in the 1920's, when cytological research had become specialised and directed at more practical goals. For many of his younger readers this concept might have seemed antiquated, but today many of its features sound surprisingly modern.

Stem cells did not become a proper research object until the 1960 s. Yet the term and the basic mind-set--namely the conception of single undifferentiated cells, be they embryonic or adult, as the basic units responsible for a directed process of development, differentiation and increasing specialisation--were already in place at the end of the nineteenth century and then transmitted on a non-linear path in the form of tropes and diagrams. Ernst Haeckel and August Weismann played a special role in this story. The first coined the term Stammzelle (stem cell), the second was the author of the first cellular stem-tree diagram. Even today, I shall argue, the understanding of stem cells, especially the popular perception, is to a large extent a Haeckelian-Weismannian one. After having demonstrated this, by analysing the terminology, in this essay I will focus on the use of cytogenetic tree diagrams between 1892 and 1925 and on the tacit understanding of stem cells that they transmit.

We celebrate in 1998 the centenary of the discovery of the Golgi apparatus. Neurones have played a special role in the history of this cell organelle, primarily because the endocellular apparatus was discovered in nerve cells by Camillo Golgi when he was studying the cerebellum of an owl. In the following years, the apparatus of the nerve cell represented the prototype of this cell component which, however, was soon also detected in many other cell types. During the 1920s and 1930s the original idea of a Golgi endocellular “network” was refused and research was focused on the constituents and function of the organelle, using various tissues and techniques. However, the real existence of the apparatus was seriously questioned until the organelle was finally identified by electron microscopy in the mid-1950s. The studies performed on nerve cells during these decades is briefly reviewed here.

The introduction of electron microscopy profoundly altered biomedical research, providing a tool for a more detailed but at the same time a spatially and temporally more restricted visual analysis. Examining the case study of Golgi apparatus research in the 1950s and 1960s, it will be shown how microscopists handled these challenges, and how these confrontations modified the general concept of cellular organization. This will also shed light on the artifact debate and on the question of scientific realism in the field of microscopy.

The history of stem cell research is considered a recent one, yet, it began as early as the middle of the nineteenth century and is rich in questions, approaches, concepts, tools, methodologies and lines of thought. There are at least nine disciplines or research fields which have made major contributions: botany and horticulture; cell theory; evolutionary biology; embryology and developmental biology; haematology; cell and tissue culture; regeneration biology; teratology and teratogeny and cancer research. Moreover, as soon as efforts aimed at extracting and culturing pluripotent cells from human embryos proved successful in 1998, stem cells became objects of bioethical controversy. The moral status of the embryo will be discussed, together with proposed technical means to avoid its destruction, such as altered nuclear transfer, single blastomere biopsy, cytoplasmic hybrids and induced pluripotent stem cells, and the possible ethical problems associated with future medical uses of stem cells. Key Concepts: Far from being a simple technology or a commodity, the study of stem cells concerns a broad spectrum of issues lying at the heart of the phenomenon of life itself, and thus touches on questions that have been on the agenda of biological inquiry for a long time. Like most biological research fields, the history of stem cell research shows a constant weaving and unweaving of many concepts and tools, coming from different experimental settings, lines of thought and at least nine different biomedical areas. At some moments of its history, the ‘stem cell’ has become a more concrete and even manageable object, at other moments it was found difficult to localise the phenomenon of self-renewal in one or in a few cells. Recently, stem cell research is characterised by harsh bioethical controversy, mainly revolving around the issue of the moral status of human embryos. Scientists have proposed some technical ways for circumventing ethical problems, but other morally relevant issues still lie before stem cell research. In the future, medical innovation through stem cell-based regenerative medicine is likely to give rise to issues regarding safety, ethical oversight and distributive justice. Keywords: regeneration; embryo; bioethics; altered nuclear transfer (ANT); induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell; cybrid; distributive justice

de Vries (1848–1935), a Dutch botanist, who pioneered research on osmosis, rediscovered Mendel's laws and developed an influential hereditary theory. Keywords: osmosis; growth; Mendel's laws; mutation; evolution theory; speciation

Weismann (1834–1914), a German zoologist who made important conceptual contributions to evolutionary theory and to heredity theory. Keywords: heredity; germline; darwinism; chromosome; variation

Naegeli (1817–1891), a Swiss botanist, made numerous important cytological discoveries and developed new theoretical concepts of cellular constitution. His anti-Darwinian orthogenetic theory enjoyed great success among German-speaking botanists. Keywords: Mendel; alternative evolutionary theories; cell division; micell; chromosome