author
Cesare Lombroso
1835–1909
A pioneering and deeply controversial figure in the history of criminology, this Italian physician argued that criminal behavior could be studied scientifically through the body and mind. His ideas shaped generations of debate, even as many of his theories were later rejected.
5 Audiobooks
Nuovi studii sul genio vol. I (da Colombo a Manzoni)
by Cesare Lombroso
La delinquenza nella Rivoluzione francese La vita italiana durante la Rivoluzione francese e l'Impero
by Cesare Lombroso
The Man of Genius
by Cesare Lombroso
Nuovi studii sul genio vol. II (Origine e natura dei genii)
by Cesare Lombroso
About the author
Born in Verona on November 6, 1835, Cesare Lombroso was an Italian physician, psychiatrist, and criminologist who became one of the best-known voices in 19th-century criminal anthropology. He studied at the universities of Padua, Vienna, and Paris, and later taught and worked in places including Pavia and Turin.
Lombroso is most associated with the idea that some people were "born criminals" and could be identified by physical characteristics. That theory is now widely discredited, but his work helped shift criminology toward the systematic study of offenders, using observation, classification, and medical language rather than focusing only on legal definitions of crime.
He died in Turin on October 19, 1909. Today, Lombroso remains an important but contested historical figure: influential in the development of criminology, yet also a reminder of how easily claims of science can be shaped by prejudice and flawed assumptions.