Michelangelo Tilli

Doctor of Medicine Michelangelo Tilli FRS
Michelangelo Tilli (1714)
Born	(1655-08-08)August 8, 1655 Castelfiorentino, Grand Duchy of Tuscany
Died	13 March 1740(1740-03-13) (aged 84) Pisa, Grand Duchy of Tuscany
Resting place	Chiesa di San Francesco, Castelfiorentino
Nationality	Tuscan
Alma mater	University of Pisa
Known for	Catalogus Plantarum Horti Pisani
Parent(s)	Desiderio di Giovanni Tilli Lucrezia Salvadori
Scientific career
Fields	Medicine and botany
Institutions	University of Pisa Orto botanico di Pisa
Academic advisors	Lorenzo Bellini

Michelangelo Tilli or Michele Angelo Tilli FRS (1655 Castelfiorentino – 1740 Pisa) was an Italian physician and botanist, noted for his publication of "Catalogus Plantarum Horti Pisani" (Florence 1723).

Biography

Catalogus Plantarum Horti Pisani

Michelangelo was born in Castelfiorentino, the son of Desiderio Tilli and Lucrezia Salvadori. In 1677 he graduated in medicine and surgery at the University of Pisa and in 1681 was appointed as naval surgeon by Cosimo III. He embarked on a Tuscan galley for the Balearic Islands and went to Constantinople in 1683 with the florentine surgeon Pier Francesco Pasquali to tend to Musaipp Pasha Mustafa II, the son of the sultan Mehmed IV, after a serious fall from his horse. From there they spent some time in Albania and Adrianople, and Tilli went on to Tunis, to study the remains of Carthage and to collect botanical specimens.

He became professor of botany at Pisa in 1685 and also director of the Botanical Garden of Pisa, introducing plants from Asia and Africa. He was among the first in Italy to use greenhouses for plants, making it possible to cultivate pineapples and coffee in Italy. Carl Linnaeus praised Pisa's botanical garden as one of the finest in Europe. Cosimo III was an enthusiastic supporter of the garden, arranging for the importation of plants from as far afield as the Americas.

He became a member of the Royal Society in 1708.

Bibliography

• Giovanni Lami, Commemorazione, in Novelle letterarie, 20 maggio 1740, n. 21, col. 325-330;
• Carl Linnaeus, Philosophia botanica, Stockholm 1751, pp. 2-17;
• Angelo Fabroni, Vitarum italorum doctrina excellentium qui saeculo XVIII floruerunt, V, Rome 1775, pp. 355-380;
• Giovanni Calvi, Commentarium inserviturum historiae pisani vireti botanici academici, Pisa 1777, pp. 157-172;
• Abgelo Fabroni, Historia Academiae pisanae, III, Pisa 1791, pp. 236-239;
• Vittorio Niccoli, Michelangelo Tilli, in Miscellanea storica della Valdelsa, I (1893), pp. 12-24;
• Ugo Nomi Pesciolini, Per la biografia di uno scienziato e viaggiatore valdelsano. Michelangelo Tilli, in Miscellanea storica della Valdelsa, XIX (1911), n. 53-54, pp. 1-21;
• Antonio Neviani, Una lettera del conte Luigi Ferdinando Marsili al professor Michelangelo Tilli, in Rivista di storia di scienze mediche e naturali, XXXI (1940), pp. 83-87;
• Eric W. Cochrane, Tradition and enlightenment in the Tuscan academies, 1690-1800, Rome 1961, pp. 130-132;
• Marie Boas Hall, La scienza italiana vista dalla Royal Society, in Scienza e letteratura nella cultura italiana del Settecento, Bologna 1984, pp. 52-60;
• Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi; Fabio Garbari; Alessandro Tosi, Giardino dei semplici: l’orto botanico di Pisa dal XVI al XX secolo, Pisa 1991, pp. 65-67, 69 f.;
• T. Arrigoni, Lo studio della botanica nella Toscana del Settecento, in Museologia scientifica, IX (1992), pp. 386, 388, 394.

External links

• Brevaglieri, Sabina (2019). "TILLI, Michelangelo". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 95: Taranto–Togni (in Italian). Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. ISBN 978-8-81200032-6.