The Man of Genius

Cesare Lombroso (1835 - 1909) was born in the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia from a wealthy Jewish family. A professor of forensic medicine, he rejected the view of the Classical School, whereby crime was a choice made by man as a calculating animal with free will; instead, he posited that the criminal could be identified anthropologically, earning him the soubriquet of the father of criminology and of criminal anthropology. However, his wide-ranging, substantive, and original writings went beyond these subject areas to include studies on genius and insanity, a pioneering examinations of the art of the insane, and, towards the end of his life, mediumship and spiritualism.