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Spallanzani was a genial, round-faced, baldheaded man who looked a bit like actor Wally Shawn. Born in northern Italy in 1729 to a lawyer and his well-connected wife, at the age of twenty he embarked on the study of law at the University of Bologna, where his cousin Laura Bassi was the first female professor of physics and mathematics in Europe.
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Ruth Kassinger (The Garden of Marvels: How We Discovered that Flowers Have Sex, Leaves Eat Air, and Other Secrets of the Way Plants Work)