| Lamberto Loria | |
| Birth Date: | 12 February 1855 |
| Birth Place: | Alexandria |
| Death Date: | 4 April 1913 |
| Death Place: | Rome |
| Nationality: | Italian |
| Field: | ethnographer, naturalist and explorer |
Lamberto Loria (12 February 1855 – 4 April 1913) was an Italian ethnographer, naturalist and explorer.
Born in Alexandria from a Jewish family, after the death of his mother Clara, he returned with his father Marco in Italy, in Pisa. Here he graduated in 1881 in mathematics.[1] Then he approached the Italian Society of Anthropology and Ethnology founded in Florence by Paolo Mantegazza (1870), becoming interested to the ethno-anthropological studies.
In 1883 he visited Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia, reaching to the Turkestan, places where he collected numerous items of ethnographic interest. In 1886, he left for New Guinea together with Elio Modigliani, but for health reasons he just stood briefly in India. Then he visited the upper Egypt going up the Nile to the First Cataract.
Soon he turned his scientific and ethnographic interests towards New Guinea, already partially explored between 1865 and 1886 by Luigi Maria d'Albertis and Odoardo Beccari. He left for the Southeast of New Guinea and at the end of 1888 for Papua, region that he explored in the years 1889-1890 and in 1892-1897.
In New Guinea he lived for a total of seven years [2] and visited the Trobriand Islands. In 1905 he made one last short trip to Eritrea.
His very rich natural and ethnographic collections were donated to the largest Italian museums (Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Genova, Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography, Museo di storia naturale sezione di antropologia ed etnologia of Florence and Museo Archeologico Etnologico of Modena). Nevertheless, he published very little works about his researches in New Guinea, which remained unpublished in the form of notes and diaries.
In his honor were named various species of animals, for example a species of frog (Oreophryne loriae), the Boulenger's bow-fingered gecko (Cyrtodactylus loriae),[3] a skink (Sphenomorphus loriae),[3] the common worm-eating snake (Toxicocalamus loriae),[3] the Loria's satinbird (Cnemophilus loriae), the Large tree mouse (Pogonomys loriae), two subspecies of birds (Ptilorrhoa leucosticta loriae, Pitta erythrogaster loriae) and others.