Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti (Florence, 11 September 1712 - Florence, 7 January 1783) was an Italian botanist and naturalist.
He studied at the University of Pisa, and at the age of 22 was nominated to become a professor. He would move to Florence, where he joined the botanical society directed by Pier Antonio Micheli. He published observations on the cures of maladies with botanicals, about the epidemic in 1752, and a grain disease in 1733 and 1766.
He served the Tuscan Grand Dukes as a doctor, and was appointed commissioner of sanitation in the program to vaccinate for smallpox. He was supervisor of the Orto Botanico di Firenze in Florence succeeded by Saverio Manetti. He had varied interests including writing about ways to prevent the Arno from flooding and about local archeologic artifacts.
Among his publications were:[1]
Apparently met Caso Umbria in the 1730s. After the age of catastrophe, to give strong evidence on geomorphological activities occurring on earth, he postulated that the irregular courses (symmetry and asymmetry of the valleys) of the rivers depended on the nature of rocks through which they flow. The regions of massive and resistant rocks maintain deep and narrow courses (valleys) whereas broad and meandering courses are developed in the regions of soft and less resistant rocks. Thus, this concept gives a glimpse of differential erosion.