Developmental Biology in Italy

In the present paper, the Italian embryologists and their main contributions to this science before 1900 will be shortly reviewed. During the twentieth century, embryology became progressively integrated with cytology and histology and the new sciences of genetics and molecular biology, so that the new discipline of developmental biology arose. The number of investigators directly or indirectly involved in problems concerning developmental biology, the variety of problems and experimental models investigated, became too extensive to be conveniently handled in the present short review (see "Molecularising embryology: Alberto Monroy and the origins of Developmental Biology in Italy" by B. Fantini, in the present issue). There is no doubt that from the Renaissance to the early 20th century, Italian scientists made important contributions to establishing the morphological bases of human and comparative embryology and to the rise of experimental embryology. Italian embryologists were often at the centre of passionate debates concerning basic problems of early embryology such spontaneous generation, preformism versus epigenesis or ovism versus animalculism. Great scientists like Marcello Malpighi and Lazzaro Spallanzani marked turning points in embryology by introducing the microscopic observation of embryos and controlled experimentation in embryology, respectively. The Stazione Zoologica, established in Naples in 1872 by the German Anton Dohrn, became an international scientific centre in which fundamental experiments for the history of developmental biology were performed (see "Molecularising embryology: Alberto Monroy and the origins of Developmental Biology in Italy" by B. Fantini, in the present issue)