Italian criminology lost its outstanding exponent today with the death of Salvatore Ottolenghi, Jewish physician and disciple of another Jew, the great Cesare Lombroso, whose successor he became after the internationally renowned scientist’s death in 1909.
Born in Asti in 1861, Ottolenghi was educated in his native town and at the University of Turin, from which he received an M. D. degree in 1884.
Two years later he formed his first association with Lombroso, which was to last twenty-three years, until the master’s death.
In 1893 he became professor of medicine and chief of the medico-forensic department at the University of Sienna, posts which he held until 1903, when he went to the University of Rome. In the same year he made an outstanding contribution to the cause of law and order when he founded the School for Scientific Police Education in the Italian capital. He held a directorate in this institution until his death, which also ended his incumbency in the chair of legal medicine at the University of Rome.
He attacked the problem of crime from the tri-fold point of view of the physician, the psychologist and the psychiatrist and wrote innumerable tracts, essays, monographs and books on his favorite subject. Many of them were regarded as among the world’s most important scientific contributions in their field.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
