Abstract

[The story of a Napolitan botanist. Gaetano Nicodemi between science and revolution]. Gaetano Nicodemi, student of the Neapolitan scientist Domenico Cirillo, spent most of his life collecting natural history specimens and taking care of his master’s famous collections. After taking part, with Cirillo, at the Neapolitan Republic of 1799, Nicodemi was exiled in France and became director of the Jardin des Plantes in Lyon, founded by the physician-botanist Emmanuel Gilibert, greatly contributing to its growth. He died in 1804 in unclear circumstance, and authorities later attributed his death to suicide by drowning. New documented attestations, together with the recognition of his distinctive handwriting in the labeling of Cirillo’s Herbarium conserved in the Museum of Agrarian Science at the University of Naples Federico II, allow a reconstruction of his life and probable death different from what is still officially claimed today.