Pellegrino Strobel
Pellegrino Strobel (August 22, 1821 – June 8, 1895) was an Italian ornithologist, zoologist, naturalist and politician. He helped lead Italian malacology (the study of molluscs) and, with Gaetano Chierici and Luigi Pigorini, played a key role in Italian prehistoric archaeology.
He was born in Milan at the Palazzo Marino, the fourth of eight children of Tyrolean noble Michael Ströbel, an official in the Habsburg administration. His uncle Leonard Liebener and the family friend Alexander von Humboldt sparked his interest in natural history. He studied at a gymnasium in Merano, earned a law degree at the University of Innsbruck in 1842, and studied natural sciences at the University of Pavia, though he did not graduate there. He later received the title Doctor of Natural Sciences in 1872 while teaching in Parma.
Strobel held several teaching posts: professor of natural history in Piacenza in 1857, then professor of natural history at the University of Parma in 1859 (also teaching mineralogy, geology and zoology). He collaborated with Luigi Pigorini on studying the Terramara lake-dwelling culture, bringing together paleontology, botany, zoology, entomology, palynology, geology, anthropology and archaeology.
In 1864 he was appointed to set up the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires. He took part in exploration trips to Patagonia and the Andes, publishing many anthropological and ethnological studies and building one of Italy’s most important mollusc collections.
After his father’s death he returned to Europe and resumed teaching at the University of Parma, where he was elected rector in 1891. He is remembered for his studies on the Terramare culture and Bronze Age civilizations in Italy, and for his research on Italian molluscs.
He died of heart disease on June 8, 1895, at his villa in Vignale, near Parma. One of his two sons, Daniele de Strobel, became a well-known painter, noted for frescoes in Parma and Piacenza.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 18:16 (CET).