Biography
Born in 1939 and today with white hair, beard and moustache, I still have occasional flashbacks of moments in my working life dedicated entirely to the synthetic and artificial fibres industry as sales manager for various Italian and overseas firms, including an important German-Dutch group for which I ran the Italian sales office. I did not abandon the field until I was able to retire. Throughout my working life, which had nothing to do with molluscan studies, I continued also to develop my scientific interests – making sacrifices and suffering stresses in family life, but always with the outstanding help and patience of my wife Franca.
The natural sciences have attracted me from when, as a boy, I collected and identified flowers, reptiles, echinoderms, insects and seashells. I was a true, Mesolithic-type opportunistic gatherer, who then went to the director of the Milan Natural History Museum, Prof. Edgardo Moltoni, in search of illumination. Only in about 1960, when I joined the Caving Group of the Italian Alpine Club’s Milan branch and met Fernando Toffoletto, Ottavio Cornaggia Castiglioni and others like them, did my interests turn towards the faunas of caves and karstic systems, and land and freshwater molluscs (which I had taken no notice of till then). My first publication in 1964 concerned the Late-Pleistocene and Holocene terrestrial fauna of a cave in Apulia, the Grotta delle Mura. My friendship and collaboration with these people continued until their deaths.
The natural sciences have attracted me from when, as a boy, I collected and identified flowers, reptiles, echinoderms, insects and seashells. I was a true, Mesolithic-type opportunistic gatherer, who then went to the director of the Milan Natural History Museum, Prof. Edgardo Moltoni, in search of illumination. Only in about 1960, when I joined the Caving Group of the Italian Alpine Club’s Milan branch and met Fernando Toffoletto, Ottavio Cornaggia Castiglioni and others like them, did my interests turn towards the faunas of caves and karstic systems, and land and freshwater molluscs (which I had taken no notice of till then). My first publication in 1964 concerned the Late-Pleistocene and Holocene terrestrial fauna of a cave in Apulia, the Grotta delle Mura. My friendship and collaboration with these people continued until their deaths.
For many years afterwards, live molluscs became the subjects of ecological and biogeographical research. Examples are the observations regarding endemic forms such as Helicodonta angigyra, Chlistoma cingulatun colubrinum and H. c. gobanzi, together with the long, wet years passed in Lombard springs and lakes identifying their molluscan inhabitants and the micro-habitats of these.
The twenty years from 1960 to 1980 saw much activity, with the re-foundation of the Italian Malacological Society, the organization of and participation in meetings, seminars and conferences, both Italian and European. My acquaintance and friendship with a large number of malacologists, ecologists and archaeologists improved the quality of my work. During the nineteen-eighties I stopped field research, as I was slowly pushed by several friends towards the terrain of archaeomalacology, in which I am still active.
The twenty years from 1960 to 1980 saw much activity, with the re-foundation of the Italian Malacological Society, the organization of and participation in meetings, seminars and conferences, both Italian and European. My acquaintance and friendship with a large number of malacologists, ecologists and archaeologists improved the quality of my work. During the nineteen-eighties I stopped field research, as I was slowly pushed by several friends towards the terrain of archaeomalacology, in which I am still active.
Amongst numerous friends and acquaintances I wish to remember in particular Bernardino Bagolini, Paolo Biagi, Pierfranco Blesio, Lanfredo Castelletti, Cesare Conci, Mauro Cremaschi, Ferdinando Ghisotti, Folco Giusti, Vittorio Parisi, Livia Pirocchi Tonolli, Oscar Ravera, Cesare F. Sacchi and Menico Torchio, together with meetings and scholarly exchange with many researchers from other countries, including H. Ant, K. Bába, W. Backhuys, E. Binder, H.D. Boeters, J.B. Burch, L. Chaix, J.E. Chatfield, H. Chevallier, G. Falkner, E. Gittenberger, A. Jayet, J.M. Gaillard, J.H. Jungbluth, F.E. Krolopp, I.M. Likharev, V. Lozek, J. Okland, O. Paget, M. Petitjean, L. Pinter, B. Salvat, O. Scarlato, H. Schütt, I. Valovirta, M. Wütrich and A. Zilch. Many names are missing from this brief list; many unfortunately are no longer with us, but I remember them all and am grateful for their trust and friendship and the stimulus they gave me to take on new malacological challenges.