Cosimo Alessandro Collini

Cosimo Alessandro Collini (14 October 1727 – 21 March 1806) was an Italian historian and Voltaire's secretary from 1752 to 1756. Born into a noble family in Florence, Collini studied law. He met Voltaire in Berlin in 1750 and became his secretary. He accompanied Voltaire when he left the service of Frederick the Great in 1753 and was confined with him and Madame Denis in Frankfurt. In 1755, Jean-Louis Wagnière became his assistant and later took his place when Collini was dismissed for insulting Madame Denis. Collini then entered the service of Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria, as his private secretary and historiographer. He staged Voltaire's *Olympie* in 1762. In 1763, he became a member of the Palatine Academy of Sciences and director of the Mannheim Cabinet of Natural History. In 1784, he was the first to describe the pterosaur that Georges Cuvier later identified as a flying reptile. In his later years, he denounced the fanaticism of the French revolutionary wars and defended the collections in his cabinet from destruction, managing to have them transferred to Munich. A street in Mannheim and the Collini-Center development are named after him.