Bio-bibliography

Italy

Carlo M. Cipolla

1995 Balzan Prize for Economic History

Carlo M. Cipolla is considered by his peers as a leader in economic history who knew how to instill a spirit of innovation in the discipline. Thanks to his intellectual curiosity, dominated by the most rigorous thought and methodology, and through meticulous research of source material, he has combined the macro-historic approach with studies in micro-history in works of great originality and solidity, which cover a broad range of economic and cultural fields.

Carlo M. Cipolla was born in Pavia on August 15, 1922; he is an Italian citizen; he taught the Economic History in the following universities: Catania (1949-53), Venice (1953-61), Turin (1961-65), Pavia (1965-78), as well as in the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa;

from 1959 full professor of Economic History at the University of California, Berkeley;

he held the Taft lectures at the University of Cincinnati, USA, in 1953, the Mac Arthur lectures at the University of Cambridge, England, in 1975, the M. Curti lectures at the University of Wisconsin in 1978;

he has also been visiting lecturer in numerous European universities (France, Belgium, Sweden, Germany, Spain and England), as well as various universities throughout USA and Canada;

currently, he is professor emeritus in the Department of Economics of the University of California, Berkeley, and at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa.

Among his numerous honors, we mention the Gold Medal of the Ministry of Public Education in Italy (1972), the honorary doctorate from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (1980) and from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Pavia (1990); he is a member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the Academia Europaea, the Accademia delle Scienze in Turin, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences of Boston, the Philosophical Society at Philadelphia, the British Academy, and the Royal Historical Society of Great Britain.

His writings include, besides the numerous articles and studies, important books which have also been translated into Danish, French, Japanese, English, Norwegian, Dutch, Polish, Portughese, Spanish, Swedish, and German. Among these, we cite:

— Studi di storia della moneta: i movimenti dei cambi in Italia dal sec. XIII al sec. XV, Pavia 1948;

— Mouvements monétaires dans l’Etat de Milan 1580-1700, Parigi 1952;

— Money, Prices and Civilization in the Mediterranean World, Princeton 1956;

— Le avventure della lira, Milano 1958;

— Storia dell’economia italiana, Torino 1959;

— The Economic History of World Population, Harmondsworth 1962;

— Guns and Sails in the Early Phase of European Expansion, Londra 1965;

— Clocks and Culture, 1300-1700, Londra 1967;

— Literacy and Development in the West, Harmondsworth 1969;

— The Economic Decline of Empires, Londra 1970;

— European Culture and Overseas Expansion, Harmondsworth 1970;

— Cristofano and the Plague. A Study in the History of Public Health in the Age of Galileo, University of California Press, Londra-Berkeley-Los Angeles 1973;

— Before the Industrial Revolution. European Society and Economy, 1000-1700, New York 1976; Routledge, Londra, 3’ edizione 1993;

— Public Health and the Medical Profession in the Renaissance, Cambridge 1976;

— Chi ruppe i rastelli a Montelupo?, Il Mulino, Bologna 1977;

— Saggi di storia economica e sociale, Il Mulino, Bologna 1988;

— Tra due culture. Introduzione alla storia economica, Il Mulino, Bologna 1988;

— Le tre rivoluzioni e altri saggi di storia economica e sociale, Il Mulino, Bologna 1989;

— Il Governo della moneta a Firenze e a Milano nei secoli XIV e XVI, Il Mulino, Bologna 1990;

— Introduzione allo studio della storia economica, Il Mulino, Bologna 1993;

— Tre storie extra-vaganti, Il Mulino, Bologna 1994.

(October 1995)