View source for Antonio Stoppani

{{Short description|Italian priest and scientist}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2020}}
[[file:Antonio Stoppani latelife.jpg|thumb|Antonio Stoppani towards the end of his life]]
'''Antonio Stoppani''' (24 August 1824{{snd}}1 January 1891)<ref name="EB1911" /> was an Italian [[w:Catholic]] priest, patriot, [[w:geologist]] and [[w:palaeontologist]]. He studied the geology of the Italian region and wrote a popular treatise, ''Il Bel Paese'' (Italian for "the beautiful country"), on geology and natural history. He was among the first to propose a geological epoch dominated by human activities that altered the shape of the land.

==Life==
Born in [[Lecco]], Stoppani studied theology and became a priest in the order of the [[Rosminians]]. He was ordained in 1848, a year of turmoil with the Siege of Milan. During this siege, the [[Five Days of Milan]], he became a hero for his role in the use of hot air balloons to send messages out of the besieged city. Along with Vincenzo Guglielmini, he ensured that the balloons could move over the walls of the city from the Seminario Maggiore di Porta Orientale and carry messages to rally the Italians against the Austrian Empire.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Turpin, E. |author2= Federighi, V. |year=2012| chapter=A new element, a new force, a new input: Antonio Stoppani's Anthropozoic|editor1=Ellsworth, E.|editor2=Kruse, J.| title=Making the Geologic Now |pages= 34–41|place= Brooklyn, United States|publisher= Punctum Books|url= http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3995&context=eispapers}}</ref> He later became professor of geology in the Royal Technical Institute of [[Milan]], and was distinguished for his research on the [[Triassic]] and [[Lias Group|Liassic]] formations of northern Italy.<ref name="EB1911">{{EB1911|inline=y|wstitle=Stoppani, Antonio|volume=25|page=967}}</ref>
[[File:PlacaaAntonioStoppani-EsinoLario-Italia.jpg|thumb|upright|Plaque in front of Chiesa di San Giovanni in [[Esino Lario]]]]
Stoppani was important as a popularizer of science. His most popular work,  ''Il Bel Paese, conversazioni sulle bellezze naturali la geologia e la geologia e la geografia fisica d'Italia'' (1876) ("The Beautiful country, conversation on the natural beauty of geology and the physical geography of Italy"), after which [[Bel Paese (cheese)|Bel Paese cheese]] was named by [[Egidio Galbani]] (the wrapper for the cheese included a portrait of Stoppani<ref>{{cite book|page=77|title=The Oxford Companion to Food| author=Davidson, Alan|year=2014| publisher=Oxford University Press}}</ref>). It presents, by means of 32 didactic, scientific conversations supposedly in front of a fireplace, ideas and concepts from the natural sciences, in language accessible to the average 19th-century reader. It was so popular that it went into 120 editions by 1920 and was a textbook in schools. It deals especially with geological curiosities and the beauty of the Italian landscape. He commented on Italians who "know almost nothing about the natural beauty of our country; yet take delight when someone calls it a garden" and that the English fall in love with just one thing and devote their energies, emotions, and life to arrive dead or alive at the summit of mountains. His introduction to natural history declared that "''man should never disappear from nature, nor should nature disappear from man''".<ref>{{cite book|page=153| title=Earth Repair: A Transatlantic History of Environmental Restoration| author=Hall, Marcus| publisher=University of Virginia Press|year= 2005}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|first=Sandro |last=Baffi| title= Fare gli Italiani : Il bel paese d'Antonio Stoppani |journal= Italies |volume= 6 |year= 2002|url=http://italies.revues.org/1599 |language=Italian}}</ref> Stoppani, like many other clergyman naturalists of the period, was a supporter of the ''concordismo'', a school of thought that sought to find concordance between the teachings of the bible and evidence from geology. He promoted the idea that Catholics needed to learn science and that the bible was to be interpreted rather than taken literally.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Vaccari|first=Ezio|date=2009|title=Geology and Genesis in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italy: a preliminary assessment|url=http://sp.lyellcollection.org/content/310/1/269|journal=Geological Society, London, Special Publications|language=en|volume=310|issue=1|pages=269–275|doi=10.1144/SP310.26|s2cid=131356474|issn=0305-8719}}</ref> He was also an important figure in "Catholic Alpinism", a movement that sought to use mountains to tell God's glory.<ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.1659/0276-4741(2006)26[358:CAASDI]2.0.CO;2|year=2006|volume=26|issue=4|pages=358–363|title=Catholic Alpinism and Social Discipline in 19th- and 20th-century Italy|journal=Mountain Research and Development|last1=Cuaz|first1=Marco}}</ref> Stoppani was however a critic of the ideas of evolution that Darwin's publication had brought into Europe.<ref>{{cite book| title=Il dogma e le scienze positive ossia la Missione Apologetica del Clero nel moderno conflitto tra la ragione e la fede| year=1884| author=Stoppani, Antonio| publisher=Fratelli Dumolard | place=Milano|url=https://archive.org/stream/AntonioStoppaniIlDogmaELeSciencePositive1884/Antonio%20Stoppani%20-%20Il%20dogma%20e%20le%20scienze%20positive%20-%201884#page/n5/mode/2up}}</ref>

Stoppani's works on paleontology and geology include:
* [https://books.google.com/books?id=fiIhAQAAMAAJ ''Paleontologie Lombarde''] (1858–1881)
* ''Les Pétrifications d'Ésino, ou Description des fossiles appartenant au dépôt triasique supérieur des environs d'Esino en Lombardie''] (1858–1860)<ref>{{Cite web |last=Stoppani  |first=Antonio |date=1858 |title=Les Pétrifications d'Ésino, ou Description des fossiles appartenant au dépôt triasique supérieur des environs d'Esino en Lombardie, divisés en quatre monographies comprenant les gastéropodes, les acéphales, les brachiopodes, les céphalopodes, les crinoïdes, les zoophytes et les amorphozoaires, par l'abbé Antoine Stoppani,... |url=https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb31410748b |access-date=22 August 2020 |website=[[Bibliothèque nationale de France]] |publisher=impr. de J. Bernardoni}}</ref>
* ''Géologie et paleontologie des conches a Avicula Contorta en Lombardie'' (1860–1865)<ref>{{Cite web |date=1874 |title=Catalogue of Books Added to the Library of Congress, from December 1, 1866, to [December 31, 1872] |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SAlQAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA360 |access-date=22 August 2020 |publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office |language=en}}</ref>
* ''Corso di geologia'' (3 vols, 1871–1873) [ [https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_4ueoJfDi0XkC vol. 1] | [https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_Mb40AERZXUMC vol. 2] | [https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_y5YKxMYTtw4C vol. 3] ]
* ''Geologia d'Italia''
** Volume 1: [https://archive.org/details/GeologiadItalia00none ''Descrizione del terreni componenti il suolo d'Italia''] (1874)
** Volume 2: [https://books.google.com/books/about/Geologia_d_Italia_L_era_neozoica_pper_An.html?id=XktDAAAAYAAJ ''L'Era Neozoica''] (1880)
In this last work the author discussed the glaciation of the Italian [[Alps]] and the history of Italy during the [[Pleistocene]] age.<ref name="EB1911"/>
Stoppani described several species of fossil molluscs while other fossil species have been named in his honour, including ''Fedaiella stoppanii'' Marini 1896 (a snail), ''Placochelyanus stoppanii'' Oswald 1930, ''Lymnaea stoppanianus'' Coppi, 1876 and ''Gyraulus (Gyraulus) stoppanii'' (Sacco, 1886).<ref>[http://www.marinespecies.org/freshgen/aphia.php?p=taxlist&searchpar=0&tComp=contains&tName=stoppani&action=search&rSkips=0&adv=0 Fossil freshwater gastropod database]</ref> Most of his collections are in the ''[[Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano|Museo di Storia Naturale, Milano]]'', the building of which he was responsible for constructing as director from 1882 to 1891.<ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.4081/nhs.2015.231|title=The Stoppani Collection of Large Bivalves (Bivalvia, Megalodontida) from the Upper Triassic of Lombardy, Italy|journal=Natural History Sciences|volume=2|pages=15|year=2015|last1=Teruzzi|first1=Giorgio|doi-access=free}}</ref> [[Stoppani Glacier]] in Tierra del Fuego is named after him.

Stoppani was the great-uncle of [[Maria Montessori]], famous for her work on education;<ref>{{cite web |title=Highlights from 'Communications 2007/1' |url=http://www.montessori-ami.org/communications/commun2007_1.htm |publisher=Association Montessori Internationale |access-date=2 May 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130325005519/http://montessori-ami.org/communications/commun2007_1.htm |archive-date=25 March 2013 }}</ref> he was the uncle of Maria's mother Renilde.<ref>{{cite book| page=3| title= Maria Montessori Her Life And Work | author=Standing, E.M.| publisher=Genesis Publishing Pvt Ltd|year= 2008}}</ref> The Italian painter Giovanni Battista Todeschini (1857–1938) was his nephew. An oil painting of Stoppani made by Todeschini is held in the [[Musei Civici di Lecco|Public Museum]] at Lecco.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.lombardiabeniculturali.it/opere-arte/schede/G1050-00204/|access-date=5 July 2016|title=Ritratto di Antonio Stoppani}}</ref>

==Anthropocene==
[[File:Monumento ad Antonio Stoppani.JPG|thumb|left|Monument to Stoppani in [[Lecco]]]]
In 1873 Stoppani acknowledged the increasing power and impact of humanity on the Earth's systems and referred to the ''anthropozoic era''<ref name="Crutzen02">{{cite journal | last=Crutzen | first=P. J. | title=Geology of mankind | journal=Nature | volume=415 | year=2002 | pages=23 | url=http://www.geo.utexas.edu/courses/387h/PAPERS/Crutzen2002.pdf | doi=10.1038/415023a | pmid=11780095 | issue=6867| s2cid=9743349 | doi-access=free }}</ref> an idea that was possibly based on [[George Perkins Marsh]] who lived in Italy<ref>{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/stream/italoamericandip00trau#page/n3/mode/2up|author=Trauth, Mary Philip| title=Italo-American Diplomatic Relations, 1861–1882. The Mission of George Perkins Marsh, First American Minister to the Kingdom of Italy. |year=1958| publisher=Catholic University of America Press| place=Washington, D.C.}}</ref> and whose work, ''Man and Nature'', was translated into Italian in 1872. In a later edition of ''Man and Nature'' published as ''The Earth as Modified by Human Action'' in 1874, Marsh noted:<ref>{{cite book|year=1874 |title=The earth as modified by human action |place=New York |publisher= Charles Scribner's Sons| author=Marsh, George P.|url=https://archive.org/stream/earthasmodifiedb00mars#page/608/mode/2up/}}</ref>
{{blockquote|In a former chapter I spoke of the influence of human action on the surface of the globe as immensely superior  in  degree  to  that  exerted  by  brute  animals,  if  not  essentially  different  from  it  in  kind.  The eminent Italian geologist, Stoppani, goes further than I had ventured to do, and treats the action of man as a new physical element altogether ''sui generis''. According to him, the existence of man constitutes a geological period which he designates as the ''Anthropozoic era''. ‘The creation of man’, says he, ‘was  the  introduction  of  a  new  element  into  nature,  of  a  force  wholly  unknown  to  earlier  periods’.}}
The idea of a new geological epoch, the [[anthropocene]], was proposed in 2000 by [[Paul Crutzen]] and Eugene Stoermer. While some have pointed to the ideas of Marsh, Stoppani, [[Teilhard de Chardin]] and [[Vladimir Vernadsky]] (''noösphere'') as precursors, others have pointed out a distinction in the geological epoch proposed by Crutzen. Whereas the effects of man proposed in the past were small and gradual, the effects are sharply marked in Crutzen's anthropocene.<ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.1177/2053019614567155|title=Was the Anthropocene anticipated?|journal=The Anthropocene Review|volume=2|pages=59–72|year=2015|last1=Hamilton|first1=C.|last2=Grinevald|first2=J.|s2cid=129701880}}</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}

== External links ==
{{Commons category|Antonio Stoppani}}
* [https://archive.org/stream/ilbelpaeseconver00stopuoft#page/n7/mode/2up Il Bel Paese] (1915 edition)
* [https://archive.org/details/studiigeologici00stopgoog Studii geologici e paleontologici sulla Lombardia] (1857)
* [https://archive.org/stream/AntonioStoppaniIlDogmaELeSciencePositive1884/Antonio%20Stoppani%20-%20Il%20dogma%20e%20le%20scienze%20positive%20-%201884#page/n5/mode/2up Il Dogma e le Scienze Positive (1884)]
* Corso di geologia [https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_fs5XLNGqtdUC volume 1] [https://archive.org/stream/bub_gb_jaDCXkHw3c8C#page/n3/mode/2up volume 2] [https://archive.org/stream/bub_gb_y5YKxMYTtw4C#page/n5/mode/2up volume 3]
* [https://archive.org/stream/bub_gb_bKzR5vN2J5IC#page/n5/mode/2up Les Pétrifications d'Ésino]

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stoppani, Antonio}}
[[Category:1824 births]]
[[Category:1891 deaths]]
[[Category:People from Lecco]]
[[Category:19th-century Italian geologists]]
[[Category:Italian paleontologists]]
[[Category:Catholic clergy scientists]]