Girolamo Fracastoro

Girolamo Fracastoro (Latin: Hieronymus Fracastorius; c. 1476/8 – 6 August 1553[1]) was an Italian physician, poet, and scholar in mathematics, geography and astronomy.

[10] A marble portrait statue of Girolamo Fracastoro by the Carrarese sculptor Danese Cattaneo (completed 1559) stands on an arch in the central Piazza dei Signori of Verona, near the monument to Dante Alighieri.

According to a popular legend the stone ball Fracastoro holds in his right hand, symbolizing the world, will fall on the first honorable person to walk under the arch.

At that period a very animated controversy sprung up in Italy, concerning the true nature and origin of marine shells, and other organized fossils found abundantly in the strata of the peninsula.

He exposed the absurdity of having recourse to a certain 'plastic force,' which it was said had the power to fashion stones into organic forms; and, with no less cogent arguments, demonstrated the futility of attributing the situation of the shells in question to the Mosaic deluge, a theory obstinately defended by some.

That inundation, he observed, was too transient, it consisted principally of fluviatile waters; and if it had transported shells to great distances, must have strewed them over the surface, not buried them at vast depths in the interior of mountains.

The clear and philosophical views of Fracastoro were disregarded, and the talent and argumentative powers of the learned were doomed for three centuries to be wasted in the discussion of these two simple and preliminary questions: first, whether fossil remains had ever belonged to living creatures; and secondly, whether, if this be admitted, all the phenomena could be explained by the Noachian deluge.