Son of a doctor, he studied in the seminars of Sulmona and Chieti, becoming passionate of classic novels and learning mathematics as a self-taught person.

He studied mathematics and celestial mechanics and in 1845 he published his first scientific paper on the orbit of the minor planet Vesta.

[3] In 1848 he participated in the liberal movements, he avoided the Bourbon repression dedicating to the King Ferdinand II his first discovery: the asteroid Hygiea, made on 12 April 1849 with the equatorial telescope of Reichenbach & Utzschneider, giving it the name of Igea Borbonica.

De Gasparis refused to assume the position of observatory director in deference to his mentor and friend Capocci.

In addition, he also independently discovered 14 Irene, which discovery was, however, credited to the English astronomer John Russell Hind.