Cosimo Alessandro Collini

Cosimo Alessandro Collini (Florence 14 October 1727-Mannheim, 21 March 1806) was an Italian historian and Voltaire's secretary from 1752 to 1756.

Portrait of Collini, artist unknown
Pterodactyl drawn by Collini in 1784

Life

Born into a noble family, he studied law and met Voltaire in Berlin in 1750 and was taken on as his secretary in April 1752.[1] When Voltaire left the service of Frederick the Great Collini accompanied him, and was confined with him and Madame Denis on Frederick's orders for three weeks in Frankfurt.[2] In 1755 the young Jean-Louis Wagnière was made his assistant, and just over a year later, took Collini's place when he was dismissed from Voltaire's service for insulting Madame Denis.[3]

He then entered the service of Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria as his private secretary and historiographer. In 1763 he became a member of the Palatine Academy of Sciences and director of the Mannheim Cabinet of Natural History. In 1764 he was the first person to describe the pterosaur that Georges Cuvier went on the identify, seventeen years later, as a flying reptile.

In his later years, he denounced the fanaticism of the French revolutionary wars and in 1799 he defended the collections in his cabinet from destruction, and managed to have them transferred, four years later, to Munich.

A street in Mannheim is named after him, as is the Collini-Center development in the city.

Work
gollark: HDDs are uncool except for the fact that they're cheaper.
gollark: Generally they mean that the interface can technically do 6Gbps, even if uncool hard disks can't read/write that much.
gollark: Ah yes, take photographs of your hard drive for archival.
gollark: Just get small stars.
gollark: Note 6000 with a built-in nuclear fusion reactor so you just refill the deuterium occasionally.

References
  1. Ian Davidson, Voltaire – A Life, Profile Books 2010 p.258
  2. Ian Davidson, Voltaire – A Life, Profile Books 2010 p.266
  3. Ian Davidson, Voltaire – A Life, Profile Books 2010 p.272
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