Carlo Giacomini

Carlo Giacomini (Sale, 29 November 1840 – Torino, 5 July 1898), was a noted Italian anatomist, neuroscientist, and a professor at the University of Turin who also made significant contributions in anthropology and embryology. He worked with the physiologist, Angelo Mosso (1846-1910), which led to the first recording of human brain pulsations.Giacomini vein, a lower limb vein, and the band of Gaicomini, a band of uncus gyri parahippocampalis he discovered in 1882, and the Giacomini vertebrae are named after him.

He contributed anthropological research regarding differences among human races, and also took an interest in teratology linked to the various cases.

He graduated in medicine and surgery in 1864 at the University of Turin. In 1866 he was a volunteer doctor in the Third Italian War of Independence and later in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. In 1868, he became anatomical area at the Institute of the same university. In 1874, he succeeded Prof. Giovanni De Lorenzi as professor of anatomy after Lorenzi's death. In 1880, he became full professor.

At the beginning of his scientific career, he conducted clinical trials with the physiologist Angelo Mosso that led to the first recording of human brain pulsations. His early research includes studies on nerve abnormalities of the hand and the venous circulation of the lower limbs and blood of the upper limbs. The so-called vertebrae Giacomini (from the fifth to the eighth thoracic vertebra) are a dorsal limit of the heart. Since 1882, followed an in-depth study of brain morphology: describing the limbic lobe, a part of the hippocampal gyrus door today the name of band of Giacomini; deduced a complete work on the cerebral convolutions (1882).

He conducted anthropological studies correlating the various convolutions of the brain to different races, demonstrating the great variety of brains. This research contrasted the beliefs of the anthropologist-criminologist Cesare Lombroso, who hypothesized that criminal activity is associated with atavistic morphology in the brain. He published a book his studies of the brains of three patients with microencephaly in 1885. In 1886, he first described an abnormality of the cranio-vertebral, called Os Odontoideum, and realized that this anomaly could alter the motility of the passage cranio-spinal, anticipating the concept of spinal instability. In 1871 he was elected member of the Royal Academy of Medicine. In 1876, he became the director of the Cabinet of Museum of Human Anatomy Luigi Rolando of Turin and in 1887 he became member of the Academy of Sciences of the same city.

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