Giovanni Arduino (16 October 1714 – 21 March 1795) was an Italian geologist who is known as the "Father of Italian Geology". Arduino proposed the division of the earth's crust into four general and successive orders: Primary, Secondary, Tertiary and Quaternary, a classification regarded as the starting point for modern stratigraphy.[1][2]
Giovanni Arduino | |
|---|---|
 Medal of Giovanni Arduini. Panteon Veneto, Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti | |
| Born | 16 October 1714 |
| Died | 21 March 1795 (aged 80) |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Known for | Stratigraphy |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Geology |
| Institutions | University of Padua |
| Notes | |
He is the brother of Pietro Arduino. | |
Biography
Arduino was born on 16 October 1714 at Caprino Veronese, a small village in the Republic of Venice, from a poor family of farmers. His brother was the botanist Pietro Arduino. He studied at Verona but did not take a degree. At eighteen he began an apprenticeship as a technician in the iron mines in Klausen, South Tyrol, and Bolzano, northern Italy. He became quickly knowledgeable about mineralogy and metallurgy and was soon able to establish himself as a mining expert.[3] As a result of his practical experience he became recognized as a mining expert, in which capacity he served several Italian administrations. He finally became professor of mineralogy at the University of Padua and a member of the Accademia nazionale delle scienze.
Arduino developed possibly the first classification of geological time, based on study of the geology of northern Italy. He divided the history of the Earth into three periods: Primitive, Secondary, and Tertiary.
The scheme proposed by Arduino in 1759,[4][5] which was based on much study of rocks of the southern Alps, grouped the rocks into four series. These were (in addition to the Volcanic or Quaternary) as follows: the Primary series, which consisted of schists from the core of the mountains; the Secondary, which consisted of the hard sedimentary rocks on the mountain flanks; and the Tertiary, which consisted of the less hardened sedimentary rocks of the foothills. Because this arrangement did not always hold true for mountain ranges other than the Alps, the Primary and the Secondary were dropped in the general case. However, the term 'Tertiary' has persisted in geological literature until its recent replacement by the Palaeogene and Neogene periods. The last period of the Cenozoic Era is still known as the Quaternary period. The Cenozoic was studied and further determined by, among others, the English geologist (and mentor of Charles Darwin) Charles Lyell.[4]
Giovanni Arduino died in Venice in 1795. The lunar ridge Dorsum Arduino is named after him.
Further reading
- Rodolico, Francesco (1970). "Giovanni Arduino". Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. 1. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 233–234. ISBN 0-684-10114-9.
- Vaccari, Ezio (2006). "The 'Classification' of Mountains in Eighteenth Century Italy and the Lithostratigraphic Theory of Giovanni Arduino (1714–1795)". In Gian Battista Vai; W. Glen E. Caldwell (eds.). The Origins of Geology in Italy. Boulder, CO: Geological Society of America. pp. 155–175. ISBN 0813724112.
- Ell, Theodore (2011). "Two Letters of Signor Giovanni Arduino, Concerning his Natural Observations: First Full English Translation. Part 1". Earth Sciences History. 30 (2): 267–286. Bibcode:2011ESHis..30..267E. doi:10.17704/eshi.30.2.22r632j0x453gj45.
References
- ^ Giovanni Arduino at the Encyclopædia Britannica
- ^ Ellenberger, F. (1994). Histoire de la Géologie, Volume 2 La grande éclosion et ses prémices 1660– 1810. Technique et Documentation. Lavoisier. Paris. (English translation by M. Carozzi: History of Geology, vol. 2, Routledge / Taylor and Francis, 1999), pp. 258-265.
- ^ Rodolico 1970, p. 233.
- ^ a b Bates, Marston (1950). The Nature of Natural History. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 51.
- ^ See:
- Arduino, Giovanni (1760). "Lettera Segonda di Giovanni Arduino … sopra varie sue osservazioni fatte in diverse parti del territorio di Vicenza, ed altrove, apparenenti alla Teoria terrestre, ed alla Mineralogia" [Second letter of Giovani Arduino … on his various observations made in different parts of the territory of Vincenza, and elsewhere, concerning the theory of the earth and mineralogy]. Nuova Raccolta d'Opuscoli Scientifici e Filologici [New collection of scientific and philogical pamphlets] (in Italian). 6: 133 (cxxxiii)–180(clxxx). Available at: Museo Galileo (Florence (Firenze), Italy) From p. 158 (clviii): "Per quanto ho potuto sinora osservavare, la serie di questi strati, che compongono la corteccia visibile della terra, mi pare distinta in quattro ordini generali, e successivi, senza considerarvi il mare." (As far as I have been able to observe, the series of these layers that compose the visible crust of the earth seems to me distinct in four general orders, and successive, not considering the sea.)
- English translation: Ell, Theodore (2012). "Two letters of Signor Giovanni Arduino, concerning his natural observations: first full English translation. Part 2". Earth Sciences History. 31 (2): 168–192. Bibcode:2012ESHis..31..168E. doi:10.17704/eshi.31.2.c2q4076006wn7751.
External links
- Gibbard, P.L. (January 2019). "Giovanni Arduino - the man who invented the Quaternary". Quaternary International. 500: 11–19. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2019.04.021.
- Effetti di Antichissimi Estinti Vulcani, e Altri Fenomeni, e Prodotti Fossili Osservati da Giovanni Arduino Archived 2015-07-02 at the Wayback Machine (1769); Osservazioni chimiche sopra alcuni fossili Archived 2016-03-12 at the Wayback Machine (1779); and Esame Chimico, e Considerazioni Sopra la Marga, Ossia Marna... Archived 2016-03-07 at the Wayback Machine (1791)- full digital facsimiles at Linda Hall Library
- Vaccari, Ezio (2013). "Arduino, Giovanni". Il Contributo italiano alla storia del Pensiero: Scienze. Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Retrieved 22 June 2025.