22 Facts About Fortunio Liceti

Fortunio Liceti, was an Italian physician and philosopher.

Fortunio Liceti was born prematurely at Rapallo, near Genoa to Giuseppe Liceti and Maria Fini, while the family was moving from Recco.

Fortunio Liceti's father was a doctor and created a makeshift incubator, thereby saving Fortunio.

Fortunio Liceti was elected to the Accademia dei Ricovrati in 1619 and held several offices within the group.

Fortunio Liceti was denied promotion when senior colleagues died in both 1631 and 1637, so Liceti moved to the University of Bologna from 1637 to 1645, where he taught philosophy.

The church was later demolished but his grave marker, inscribed with an epitaph composed by Fortunio Liceti himself, was saved and is housed in the city's Civic Museum.

Fortunio Liceti then used this theory to explain the inheritance of acquired characteristics, genetic abnormalities and interspecies hybrids.

Fortunio Liceti did provide explanations for these abnormalities, including the narrowness of the uterus, problems with the placenta, and the adhesion of the amniotic fluid with the embryo.

Fortunio Liceti was thus the first to recognize that fetal diseases could lead to the malformation of offspring.

Fortunio Liceti dealt with the question of spontaneous generation in his 1628 work De spontaneo viventium ortu libri quatuor, in which he argued that life could be generated from decomposing plant or animal material in which part of the vegetative or sensitive soul remained.

Fortunio Liceti published a collection of examples of long-term fasting in 1612, De his, qui diu vivunt sine alimento.

Fortunio Liceti's intention was to argue that humans could live a long time with little or no food; this thesis was attacked by critics and so Liceti published two responses, De feriis altricis animaenemeseticae disputationes in 1631 and Athos perfossus, sive Rudens eruditus in 1636.

Fortunio Liceti further discussed the relationship between the microcosm of the human body and the macrocosm of the universe in his 1635 work De mundi et hominis analogia.

Fortunio Liceti was involved in a friendlier astronomical debate with Galileo between 1640 and 1642.

Fortunio Liceti used this stone as analogy for the moon, believing that the moon released light absorbed by the sun, contrary to Galileo's argument in Sidereus Nuncius that the moon's illumination is caused by the reflection of sunlight from the earth.

Fortunio Liceti sent a copy of his book to Galileo, who, in response, wrote a polemical letter to Prince Leopoldo de' Medici of Tuscany defending his views; this letter is the last scientific work produced by Galileo before his death.

Fortunio Liceti complained that the letter was circulated before he had seen it so Galileo sent a friendlier version of the letter to Fortunio Liceti, who published it along with his point-by-point response in 1642 as De Lunae subobscura luce prope coniunctiones, et in eclipsibus observata.

In 1640 and 1641, respectively, Fortunio Liceti published two more general works on light and illumination, De luminis natura et efficientia libri tres and De lucidis in sublimi ingenuarum exercitationum liber.

Fortunio Liceti wrote three books on ancient gems, rings, and their hidden meaning: De anulis antiquis, De lucernis antiquorum reconditis, and Hieroglyphica, sive Antiqua schemata gemmarum anularium.

The seventh and eighth volume deals primarily with a theological controversy Fortunio Liceti engaged in with Matija Ferkic.

Fortunio Liceti's books are well-represented in the Library of Sir Thomas Browne.

Reid Barbour in his recent biography of Browne considers Fortunio Liceti to have been a significant influence upon Browne's Religio Medici and Pseudodoxia Epidemica.