Renato Biasutti ( San Daniele del Friuli, 22 March 1878 –

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

, 3 March 1965) was a notable

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

geographer A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society, including how society and nature interacts. The Greek prefix "geo" means "earth" a ...

, who published many works on physical

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...

Life

He studied in the

University of Florence The University of Florence ( Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Firenze'') (in acronym UNIFI) is an Italian public research university located in Florence, Italy. It comprises 12 schools and has around 50,000 students enrolled. History The f ...

under the guidance of Giovanni Marinelli and later taught at the Universities of

Naples Naples ( ; ; ) is the Regions of Italy, regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 908,082 within the city's administrative limits as of 2025, while its Metropolitan City of N ...

and Florence. During the 1926 census, he traveled from town to town to conduct research on the life in the rural homes of Italy. Its first volume, which came to light in 1938, was titled ''La casa rurale in Toscana'' (The Farm-house in Tuscany). In this research on the Tuscan farmhouses, Biasutti contributed to the methods of anthropological research by first giving a thorough description of the geographic reality in which the object to be studied is contained. In 1905, Biasutti explored

Eritrea Eritrea, officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa, with its capital and largest city being Asmara. It is bordered by Ethiopia in the Eritrea–Ethiopia border, south, Sudan in the west, and Dj ...

, and in 1914 visited

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ), or Greater Tibet, is a region in the western part of East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are other ethnic groups s ...

, as well as

Cyrenaica Cyrenaica ( ) or Kyrenaika (, , after the city of Cyrene), is the eastern region of Libya. Cyrenaica includes all of the eastern part of Libya between the 16th and 25th meridians east, including the Kufra District. The coastal region, als ...

and

Rhodes Rhodes (; ) is the largest of the Dodecanese islands of Greece and is their historical capital; it is the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, ninth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Administratively, the island forms a separ ...

. He also explored the

United States of America The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguo ...

in 1912 and

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

in 1925. His main work is the ''Le razze e i popoli della terra'', published for the first edition in 1941. The fourth and last edition was published in 1967, after his death. He was awarded by the Italian

Accademia dei Lincei The (; literally the "Academy of the Lynx-Eyed"), anglicised as the Lincean Academy, is one of the oldest and most prestigious European scientific institutions, located at the Palazzo Corsini on the Via della Lungara in Rome, Italy. Founded in ...

because of this book in 1951. From 1933 until 1957 he directed the ''Rivista geografica italiana'' and in those decades he was also President of the ''Società di studi geografici di Firenze''. From 1947 until 1953, Biasutti was Manager of "Ethnological Geography" of the Italian

Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche The National Research Council (Italian: ''Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, CNR'') is the largest research council in Italy. As a public organisation, its remit is to support scientific and technological research. Its headquarters are in Rome. ...

(CNR). Biasutti was a member of the "Accademia dei Lincei", when he died in 1965, and he was also known for his contributions in the field of

geology Geology (). is a branch of natural science concerned with the Earth and other astronomical objects, the rocks of which they are composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Earth ...

about the classification of the dolines, used to classify dolines like Gurio Lamanna. R. Biasutti (1916)

Partial bibliography

* * ''Le Razze e i Popoli della Terra'', v. 1-4., Renato Biasutti et al., Unione Tipografico-Editrice, Turin, ed. 3, 1959. pp. 2914, ill. 37,000 reviewed by Carleton S. Coon in ''Science'' 1 July 1960: Vol. 132 no. 3418 p. 29 * ''La casa rurale nella Lunigiana. La casa rurale della Toscana''. Fondi, Mario e Biasutti, Renato. Casa Editrice Leo S. Olschki, Firenze, 1952.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Biasutti, Renato 1878 births 1965 deaths Italian geographers Italian anthropologists National Research Council (Italy) people

Life

Partial bibliography

See also

References

External links