Giuseppe Giovanni Antonio Meneghini

Giuseppe Giovanni Antonio Meneghini (30 July 1811, Padua – 29 January 1889, Pisa) was an Italian botanist, geologist and paleontologist.

In 1839 he was appointed professor of preparatory sciences at Padua, a position he maintained up until 1848, when he was removed from his post due to his association with revolutionaries during the First Italian War of Independence, in which he followed the leadership of his brother Andrea.

In 1849 he became a professor of mineralogy and geology at the University of Pisa, where the position had become vacant after the death of Leopoldo Pilla (1805–1848), who was killed in the battle of Curtatone.

[2][3] He made contributions in his studies involving the geology of Tuscany, identifying Triassic fossils and worked across Italy and Sardinia, including Cambrian Period trilobites found in Sardinia and ammonites uncovered in Lombardy and the Apennines.

[6] In 1839 the botanical genus Meneghinia (family Boraginaceae) was named in his honor by Stephan Endlicher.