Nicola Onorati

Nicola Onorati who sometimes wrote under the pseudonym Columella (26 August 1764 – 11 January 1822) was an Italian agronomist and naturalist.

He was born Gaetano Niccola Bartolomeo Onorati in Craco in Lucania (province of Basilicata) to a family of limited means.

His intelligence garnered him an education and by age 20 he had entered the Franciscan order of observant minorites in Principato, and was sent as a novitiate to a seminary of Bologna.

At age 26, he was a teacher in philosophy at Bologna, and received a position in his native town to teach theology.

Dedicated to agriculture, by 1788 he was appointed to a professorship of agronomy for ten years at the University of Salerno.