GRASSI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA Italian zoologist, was born on March 27, 1854, at Rovellasca, and died in Rome on May 4, 1925. He graduated in medicine at Pavia, and after studying zoology at Heidelberg and Wiirzburg, was appointed professor of zoology at Catania in 1883, and of comparative anatomy at the University of Rome in 1895. He was made a sena tor in 1908. Grassi's important researches concern the life-history of intestinal worms, of protozoa and of eels, the Chaetognatha, the social life of the termites, the Phylloxera, the sporozoan malarial parasite of the mosquito and the transmission of malaria in man. His chief publications are : I Chetognati (1883) ; I progenitori degli Insetti e dei Miriapodi, L'.lapyx e la Campodia ( 1886 ) ; Con tribuzione allo studio dei parassiti malarici (1892, with R. Faletti) ; Studi di tot zoologo sulfa malaria (1900) ; Flagellati viventi nei Termiti (1917).
A complete bibliography with a good account of Grassi's work is given in Commemorazione del socio nazionale Prof. Battista Grassi (Castello, 1027).