ABSTRACT
One of the great Renaissance naturalists, Aldrovandi spent the majority of his life in north-central Italy, where he taught natural history at the University of Bologna. The son of a Bolognese notary, Aldrovandi traveled throughout Europe as a youth, studying philosophy and mathematics at the University of Padua (1548-1549) and receiving a medical degree at Bologna (1553). He developed his interest in natural history and collecting, in part, through an encounter with the French naturalist Guillaume Rondelet (1507-1566) and through subsequent study with the Bolognese naturalist Luca Ghini (ca. 1490-1556), one of the first professors of medicine to take students on botanical field trips. Aldrovandi succeeded Ghini as professor of natural history at Bologna in 1556.
