Stefano Lorenzini (born around 1652,

Florence, Italy Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence was a centre of medieval European t ...

— date of death unknown) was an Italian

physician A physician, medical practitioner (British English), medical doctor, or simply doctor is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through the Medical education, study, Med ...

and noted

ichthyologist Ichthyology is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish, including bony fish (Osteichthyes), cartilaginous fish (Chondrichthyes), and jawless fish (Agnatha). According to FishBase, 35,800 species of fish had been described as of March 2 ...

. He studied medicine in

Pisa Pisa ( ; ) is a city and ''comune'' (municipality) in Tuscany, Central Italy, straddling the Arno just before it empties into the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for the Leaning Tow ...

and surgery at the Hospital of St. Florence Maria Nuova, with teachers including

Francesco Redi Francesco Redi (18 February 1626 – 1 March 1697) was an Italians, Italian physician, naturalist, biologist, and poet. He is referred to as the "founder of experimental biology", and as the "father of modern parasitology". He was the first perso ...

, Nicholas Steno, John Fynch among other prominent scholars. He fell into disgrace with the Grand Duke Cosimo III de' Medici, who imprisoned him along with his brother , a famous

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

. His observations on

shark Sharks are a group of elasmobranch cartilaginous fish characterized by a ribless endoskeleton, dermal denticles, five to seven gill slits on each side, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. Modern sharks are classified within the ...

s, published in Florence in 1678, was an in-depth study of the animals'

anatomy Anatomy () is the branch of morphology concerned with the study of the internal structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old scien ...

and

physiology Physiology (; ) is the science, scientific study of function (biology), functions and mechanism (biology), mechanisms in a life, living system. As a branches of science, subdiscipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ syst ...

, based on new mechanistic and corpuscular perspectives applied to the study of the living organism. He is most famous for the discovery of the ampullae of Lorenzini, special electromagnetic sense organs possessed by the Elasmobranchii (sharks and rays), which are located in front of the head and form a network of canals filled with gel.

Works

* Stefano Lorenzini Fiorentino: ''Osservazioni intorno alle torpedini'', l'Onofri, Florenz 1678
online

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lorenzini, Stefano 17th-century Italian physicians 1650s births Year of death missing Italian ichthyologists