page_title: Giovanni Battista Grassi
section_title: Anatomy and entomology
hierarchical_section_title: Giovanni Battista Grassi / Professional achievements / Anatomy and entomology
context_page_description: Giovanni Battista Grassi was an Italian physician and zoologist, best known for his pioneering works on parasitology, especially on malariology. He was Professor of Comparative Zoology at the University of Catania from 1883, and Professor of Comparative Anatomy at Sapienza University of Rome from 1895 until his death. His scientific contributions covered embryological development of honey bees, on helminth parasites, the vine parasite phylloxera, on migrations and metamorphosis in eels, and on termites. He was the first to describe and establish the life cycle of the human malarial parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, and discovered that only female anopheline mosquitoes are capable of transmitting the disease. His works in malaria remain a lasting controversy in the history of Nobel Prizes, because a British army surgeon Ronald Ross, who discovered the transmission of malarial parasite in birds was given the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. But Grassi, who demonstrated the complete route of transmission of human Plasmodium, and correctly identified the types of malarial parasite as well as the mosquito vector, Anopheles claviger, was denied.
context_section_description: Grassi's earlier works were on anatomy and then entomology. He studied the development of the vertebral column in bony fishes and also endemic goiter. His studies on bees, myriapods and termites were monumental. He also studied the chetognates and the reproduction of eels, and he described a new species of spider, Koenenia mirabilis in 1885, dedicated to his wife.
  He also made significant contribution to the study of the phylloxera of grapes, which he pursued for several years. The notes of his observations La questione fillosserica in Italia (1904) influenced the Italian Ministry of Agriculture, which eventually requested him to do an exhaustive study of this subject. In 1912 he produced a monumental investigation of the morphology and biology of the Italian and other European genera of phylloxera. It was a foundation for systematic control of agricultural pests.
caption: Grassi Giovanni Battista
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