Pietro Rossi (scientist)

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Pietro Rossi (23 January 1738 – 21 December 1804) was an Italian scientist and entomologist. He studied at the University of Pisa and earned a doctorate in philosophy and medicine in 1759. He became a professor of logic in 1763, a post he held until 1801, when he received the chair of natural history with the special field of insectology, making him the world's first professor of entomology. His notable works include Fauna etrusca (1790) and Mantissa insectorum (1792), early and influential texts in entomology that still affect taxonomy and naming today. Parts of his insect collection were once owned by Johann Christian Ludwig Hellwig and are now in the Natural History Museum in Berlin. In 1793 he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. After his death, the Pietro Rossi entomological collection became part of the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale in Milan.