He was born in Zara,
Austrian Empire (now
Zadar,
Croatia) on 2 November 1855. The identity of his parents is unknown. It is known, however, that his father was originally from
Fiume (Rijeka), and a captain in the
Navy, and that his mother was
Venetian. He was educated in his native
Dalmatia, in
Istria and in
Graz. He enrolled at the
University of Vienna, where he met
Guglielmo Oberdan, who at the time was a prominent figure among Italian students. He later fled Austria together with Oberdan and other Italian
irredentists, and was able to see again his family only when Zara (Zadar) was annexed to Italy, in the aftermath of the
Treaty of Rapallo. He came back to Italy, where he made important studies in the field of geology. He contributed to the creation of the '' Carta geologica d'Italia
, although he made yet more fundamental contributions in the fields of crystallography, mathematics and physics, publishing such books as Contributo alla geologia del Gargano
, in Bollettino del Reale Comitato geologico d’Italia
(1893), Il calcolo dei quaternioni in cristallografia
(1893), Le roccie eruttive della Punta delle Pietre Nere in provincia di Foggia
(1894), Über Homogenität, in Zettschr. f. Krystall
(1898), Grundzüge der Krystallographie
(1904), Determinazione di tre indici principali di rifrazione in una sezione qualsiasi'' (1912). In 1900 he became Engineer in Chief in
Iglesias (
Sardinia), and the director of the local mining school. In 1905 he became professor at the
University of Parma, teaching
mineralogy. He spent his summers in Germany, studying
crystallography with
Victor Goldschmidt and
Paul Heinrich von Groth. In 1902 he joined the
Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland. He studied geology in
Rome and
Berlin (
Bergakademie). At this time he made several excursions in
Thuringia, in the
Harz and in the area around Berlin. He also studied
pedology in the newly established laboratory in Berlin. He later promoted the annexation of Fiume (Rijeka) and Zara (Zadar) to Italy, dedicating his work to it. He died in
Bologna on 4 August 1925. ==Legacy==