Marcello Malpighi

Malpighi spent his last days in the service of Pope Innocent XII as his physician. Suffering from apoplexy, he breathed his last on November 30, 1694 at the age of 66.

Various anatomical structures in the human excretory system such as the ‘Malpighian Corpuscles’ found in the nephron and Malpighian tubules found in the excretory tract of insects are named after this pioneering scientist

Marcello Malpighi was born to parents Marcantonio Malpighi and Maria Cremonini in the Papal State of Bologna, Italy on March 10, 1628.

He completed his early education from grammar school and pursued higher studies from the ‘University of Bologna’ when he was only seventeen, in 1646.

It was at the university that one of his teachers Francesco Natali realised Malpighi’s inclination towards medicine and encouraged him to pursue his goals. Thus in 1649, Marcello began his doctorate studies in medicine under the tutelage of mentors like Bartolomeo Massari and Andrea Mariani.

At the age of twenty-one, he lost both of his parents but he did not let the circumstances prove a hindrance in his educational pursuits. In 1653, the university awarded him doctoral degrees in philosophy and medicine.

Malpighi then embarked on an academic career at the university in 1656 teaching logic to students but soon moved to Pisa where he was appointed as the chair of theoretical medicine.

At the ‘University of Pisa’, he garnered friendships with mathematician Giovanni Borelli who would introduce him to the ‘Accademia del Cimento’ which was a pioneering scientific society.

During his tenure at Pisa, he conducted studies on blood striving to answer the medical enigmas related to anatomy and physiology of living beings. However his stay at the university was cut short by poor health aggravated by the weather conditions in the Italian city.

Upon his return to his Alma matter the ‘University of Bologna’ he was appointed as lecturer in theoretical medicine, in 1659. Here he continued his research on microscopes conducting studies on anatomy.

In 1661, he made a breakthrough discovery when he successfully described the structure of capillaries which connected the arteries and capillaries. He also studied the structure of lungs in frogs and tortoise and described the function of alveoli or air sacs which allowed exchange of gasses during respiration.

Marcello was hailed as father of modern anatomy owing to his numerous contributions in the field. ‘De polypo cordis’ published in 1666, which included his studies of the mechanism by which blood clots and the discovery of RBC’s was a milestone discovery in the field of anatomy.