This year, my tribute to famous Italians has been heavy on the Science side, namely Astronomy but Dr. Schiaparelli is relevant due to the joint ESA-Russia Schiaparelli mission to Mars. Today is the day the probe makes its attempt to land in an atmosphere that’s one percent the density of ours…parachutes aren’t much use, gotta’ depend on those rocket boosters.
As for Giovanni Schiaparelli, his greatest contribution to Astronomy was the naming of Mars’ “seas” and “continents” in the 1870s. His usage of the Italian word canali (which means “channels”) was misinterpreted by the American Astronomer Lowell for canals and led to the silliness about Mars being inhabited. The “canals” are really an atmospheric thing because we have yet to find liquid water on our neighbor.
Besides Mars, he also studied binary stars (pretty good for 19th Century technology) and proved comets are often tied to meteor showers.