A PIONEER OF ITALIAN NEUROSCIENCE: THE ACADEMIC LIFE OF RUGGERO BORTOLAMI

Ruggero Bortolami, emeritus professor of Systematic and Comparative Veterinary Anatomy of the University of Bologna, passed away in July 2014 after a long life spent loving from the bottom of his hearth anatomy and neuroscience in most of its aspects. He was born in Padua on June 30, 1926 and in 1949 he graduated with honors in Veterinary Medicine at the University of Bologna. In 1959 he became full professor of Veterinary Anatomy at the University of Sassari and in 1968 and then he moved to the University of Bologna as professor of Systematic and Comparative Veterinary Anatomy, a position he held until his retirement in 1999. During his long and prestigious career Prof. Bortolami studied several topics including proprioception of the eye muscles; the morphological and functional relationships between the trigeminal nerve and the motor nerves of the eye and the synapses of primary afferents neurons, via the ventral roots of the spinal cord. His activity resulted in about 350 papers mainly in international peer-reviewed journals. He was the Editor of the Italian version of the Robert Barone treatise of veterinary anatomy and co-Author of the volume dedicated to the central nervous system. He funded the Italian Association of Veterinarian Morphologists and became member of several national and international scientific societies, e.g., the World Association of Veterinary Anatomists, of which he was Vice President from 1971 to 1973. We owe him a lot for launching and co-founding our beloved Italian Group for the Study of Neuromorphology (GISN) that he continued to support in any circumstances, with his high reputation and strong intellectual energy. The GISN will always remember Prof. Bortolami forever for his outstanding scientific achievements and devoted passion for science to innovation and progression of comparative anatomy and neuroscience. We are proud to be in his scientific legacy.