Rodolfo Emilio Giuseppe Pichi-Sermolli (24 February 1912 – 22 April 2005) was an Italian

botanist Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...

.Necrology
He was born in

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 ...

, son of Giuseppe Pichi-Sermolli and Maria née Del Rosso. He graduated in

natural history Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...

from 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 ...

in 1935. He married Carla Bernardini on 9 April 1942, and they went on to have two children. He was assistant at the Institute of Botany in the University of Florence from 1935 to 1958, then became professor of botany at the

University of Sassari The University of Sassari (, UniSS) is a public university located in Sassari, Italy. It was founded in 1562 and is organized in 13 departments. The University of Sassari earned first place in the rankings for the best “medium-sized” Italian ...

Sardinia Sardinia ( ; ; ) is the Mediterranean islands#By area, second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, and one of the Regions of Italy, twenty regions of Italy. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, north of Tunisia an ...

from 1958 to 1959. From 1959 he was professor at the Institute of Botany in the

University of Genoa The University of Genoa () is a public research university. It is one of the largest universities in Italy and it is located in the city of Genoa, on the Italian Riviera in the Liguria region of northwestern Italy. The original university was fou ...

and director of the Botanical Garden. He was a specialist on the

ecology Ecology () is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their Natural environment, environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community (ecology), community, ecosystem, and biosphere lev ...

and

phytogeography Phytogeography (from Greek φυτόν, ''phytón'' = "plant" and γεωγραφία, ''geographía'' = "geography" meaning also distribution) or botanical geography is the branch of biogeography that is concerned with the geographic distribution ...

of tropical Africa, and also worked in plant

taxonomy image:Hierarchical clustering diagram.png, 280px, Generalized scheme of taxonomy Taxonomy is a practice and science concerned with classification or categorization. Typically, there are two parts to it: the development of an underlying scheme o ...

and

pteridology The ferns (Polypodiopsida or Polypodiophyta) are a group of vascular plants (plants with xylem and phloem) that reproduce via spores and have neither seeds nor flowers. They differ from mosses by being vascular, i.e., having specialized tissue ...

Selected bibliography

*Pichi-Sermolli, Rudolfo E. G. ''Authors of Scientific Names in Pteridophyta''. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. 1996. 78pp, PB. . *Pichi-Sermolli, Rudolfo E. G. '' Index Filicum, Supplementum Quartum, pro Annis 1934–1960 ndex to the Ferns, Fourth Supplement, for Years 1934–1960'. International Bureau for Plant Taxonomy and Nomenclature, Utrecht, Netherlands. 1965. vi/370 pp., PB. *Pichi-Sermolli, Rudolfo E. G. "A provisional catalogue of the family names of living pteridophytes." ''Webbia'' 25: 219 - 297. 1970. *Pichi-Sermolli, Rudolfo E. G. "Historical review of the higher classification of the Filicopsida." In Jermy, A.C., Crabb, J.A. & Thomas, B.A. eds, ''Phylogeny and Classification of the Ferns''. Suppl. 1 Bot. J. Linn. Soc. 67: 11 - 40, f. 1 - 8, pl. 1 - 19. 1973. *Pichi-Sermolli, Rudolfo E. G. "Tentamen pteridophytorum genera in taxanomicum ordinam redigendi." ''Webbia'' 31: 315 - 512. 1977.

General references

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pichi-Sermolli, Rodolfo Emilio Giuseppe 20th-century Italian botanists Pteridologists Scientists from Florence University of Florence alumni Academic staff of the University of Florence Academic staff of the University of Sassari Academic staff of the University of Genoa 1912 births 2005 deaths