Lombroso, Cesare (1835–1909)

Cesare Lombroso's parents, Aronne Lombroso and Zefora Levi, both came from wealthy, educated Jewish families established respectively in Veneto and Piedmont. With the sensitivity and lively intellect that were to be hallmarks of his character throughout his life, a young Lombroso experienced the Enlightenment, freemasonry, and patriotism that pervaded the tumultuous years of the Italian Risorgimento and found particularly fertile terrain in his mother's family.

Early on, Lombroso read the works of Paolo Marzolo (1811–1868), whose linguistic analysis led him to the field of historicist and positivist thinking, which Giambattista Vico's (1668–1744) ponderings had initiated in Italy. From that moment, guided by the writings of Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) and Auguste Comte (1798–1857), Lombroso delved deeper into sociological and positivist thinking, refuting the romantic spiritualism that dominated Italian culture at the time. From these premises, it was a short step to Charles Darwin's (1809–1882) theory of evolution, which Lombroso took to champion in Italy.

Lombroso enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Pavia in 1852, and then transferred in 1854 to the University of Padua. He continued his medical studies at the University of Vienna in 1855 and returned to the University of Pavia in 1856, where he graduated in 1858. A volunteer in the Second Italian War of Independence (1859), he acquired extensive medical and surgical battlefield experience and won two medals for military valor.

Appointed professor at the University of Pavia, he held the chair in psychiatry from 1862 to 1876, and then the chair in medicine and hygiene. Awarded the chair in legal psychiatry in 1896, he finally accepted the chair in criminal anthropology at the University of Turin. He never separated his psychiatric and anthropological interests from his social commitment, which tended decisively toward reform socialism. In fact, he highlighted many links between the national hygiene and health situation and the need for public action aimed at slum clearance and social reform, especially in southern Italy.

In 1871, Lombroso became director of the asylum in Pesaro, where he took an interest in the personality of the criminal as an expression of atavism. He established indissoluble links with the Italian positive penal school, which was so successful at that time in Italy and in the rest of the world, especially South America.

The positivist empirical method accompanied Lombroso's studies throughout his lifetime. He also applied it to paranormal phenomena, which he studied during his last years by examining the behavior of the medium Eusapia Paladino (1854–1918). When Lombroso died, he left his body to science at the Institute of Anatomy and Pathological Histology—the last gesture of a true scientist.