Avi Ohry
Tel Aviv, Israel

Back in 1993, while spending a sabbatical in Long Island, a few medical colleagues suggested we meet at a special Italian restaurant called Asti. The restaurant was located at 13 E. 12th St. in Greenwich Village, NYC. It was a unique experience. Besides an excellent menu, many of the waiters were professional opera singers who sang beautiful arias every night. The restaurant, open from 1924 to 2000, was founded by Adolph Mariani, whose son Lorenzo Mariani has been stage director of opera in Italy, the United States, Israel, and Finland, as well as artistic director of the Teatro Massimo in Palermo.¹

All the walls of the restaurant were covered with photographs of famous opera singers. It was a great culinary-musical and exciting experience! Asti is a small town in Piemonte, Northern Italy, near Turin, famous for its wine.

I decided to find out if there were other scientists or physicians born in Asti. I found out that the most famous man from this small town was Leonardo Botallo (1530 – c. 1587). He was an anatomist whose name was incorrectly attributed to what is now called a patent ductus arteriosus and a patent foramen ovale. He also published several treatises, including De curandis vulneribus sclopettorum (1560) which examined gunshot wounds and questioned the contemporary theory that gunshot wounds were to be treated as if they were poisoned.^2,3 He also published the Opera omnia medica et chirurgica (1660).⁴

Another notable son of Asti was Joseph ben Gershon Concio (Giuseppe Conzio) a Jewish author in the early 17th century, who wrote Remember the Souls, describing the plague of 1630–31. Vittorio Alfieri (1749–1803), was a dramatist, described as the “founder of Italian tragedy.” Mikhail Tsvet (1872–1919) was a Russian-Italian botanist and inventor of chromatography. His mother was Italian and his father a Russian official. After his mother died, his father took him to Geneva, where he studied physics and mathematics, botany, and cell physiology. He moved to St. Petersburg, where he work at the Russian Academy of Sciences, then in 1902 moved to Warsaw, and worked at the Institute of Plant Physiology of the Warsaw University. In 1917 he became a Professor of Botany and director of the botanical gardens at the University of Tartu.⁵

Mikhail Tsvet invented chromatography in 1900 in the course of his research on plant pigments.⁶ Giuseppe Montalenti (1904–1990) was a zoologist and professor of genetics at the Sapienza University of Rome. He was elected a member of the Accademia dei Lincei (1951).⁷ Giorgio Baldizzone (b. 1946 in Asti) is an entomologist who specializing in the study of Microlepidoptera, in particular the family Coleophoridae. He is past president of the Piedmonte and Valle d’Aosta, chapter of the World Wide Fund for Nature.⁸

References

1. “Lorenzo Mariani.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenzo_Mariani
2. Tozzo P, Zanatta A, D’Angiolella G, Caenazzo L, Zampieri F. “Leonardo Botallo (1530-1587) and his pioneering contributions to traumatology, cardiology and deontology.” J Med Biogr. 2022;30(1):50-6.
3. “Leonardo Botallo.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_Botallo
4. Benjamin JA, Schullian DM. “Observations on fused kidneys with horseshoe configuration: the contribution of Leonardo Botallo (1564).” J Hist Med Allied Sci. 1950;5(3):315-26.
5. “Mikhail Tsvet.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Tsvet
6. Debendetti E. “Michele Tsvett realizzatore della cromatografia” [“Michele Tsvet, the discoverer of chromatography”]. Minerva Med. Mar 28, 1956;47(25):536-8. Italian.
7. Glass B. “Giuseppe Montalenti (13 December 1904-2 July 1990).” Proc Am Philos Soc. 1993;137(2):295-8.
8. Baldizzone G, Landry JF. “Coleophora ericarnella Baldizzone, a new species of the C. pyrrhulipennella group (Lepidoptera: Coleophoridae) from the South-Eastern Alps.” Zootaxa. 2016 ;4111(2):177-86.