Eva Mameli

Giuliana Luigia Evelina Mameli (February 12, 1886 – March 31, 1978), was an Italian botanist, and naturalist.

A native of Sassari, in Sardinia, in 1906 she moved to Pavia with her brother Efisio Mameli, chemist and pharmacologist at the local university, where in 1907 she graduated in Natural Sciences. In 1915 she obtained the libera docenza. While a junior lecturer at the University of Pavia, she married agronomist Mario Calvino. In 1920 Mario offered Eva Mameli a job as Head of the Botany Department of the Agricultural Experiment Station (Estaciòn Experimental Agronòmica) in Santiago de Las Vegas, Cuba, where the couple went to live and where in 1923 their first child, Italo Calvino, was born. Born into a secular family, Eva has been described by her son Italo as a pacifist, educated in the "religion of civic duty and science". She died in San Remo, aged 92.