MOLINA, JUAN IGNACIO

(b. Guaraculen, Talca, Chile, 24 June 1740; d. Bologna, Italy, 12 September 1829)

natural history.

Molina received his early education at Talca; when he was sixteen, he entered the Jesuit college at Concepción, where he studied languages and the natural sciences. He entered the Jesuit order and was made librarian of the college, but in 1768 he had to leave Chile because of the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Spanish dominions. Molina received holy orders upon arrival at Imola, Italy; and in 1774 he was appointed professor of natural sciences at the Institute of Bologna, where he wrote most of his works. Some of his lectures maintained the analogy of the matter of living organisms and of minerals and the idea of the evolution of human beings, and he was censured by his superiors. Molina, who remains the classic author on the natural history of Chile, incorporated the observations of A. F. Frézier and Feuillée in the 1776 revised edition of his Compendio.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Molina first published Compendio della storia geografica, naturale, e civile del regno del Chile (Bologna, 1776) anonymously; it was greatly improved in its 2nd ed., Saggio sulla storia naturale del Chile (Bologna, 1782). Storia civile (Bologna, 1786) was trans. into German, Spanish, French, and English. Molina’s pupils published his 14 major essays on natural history under the title Memorie di storia naturale lette in Bologna nelle adunaza dell’Istituto, 2 vols. (Bologna, 1821).

II. Secondary Literature. See Rodolfo Jaramillo Bairiga, El abate Juan Ignacio Molina, primer evolucionista y precursor de Teilhard de Chardin (Santiago de Chile, 1963); Enrique Laval, “La medicina en el abate Molina,” in Anales chilenos de historia de la medicina (1965); and Miguel Rojas Mix, in Anales de la Universidad de Chile (1965).

Francisco Guerra