Giovanni Baptista Ferrari

Giovanni Baptista (also Battista) Ferrari (1 May 1584 in Siena – 1 February 1655 in Siena), was an Italian Jesuit, orientalist, university teacher and botanist. Linguistically highly gifted and an able scientist, at 21 years of age Ferrari knew a good deal of Hebrew and spoke and wrote excellent Greek and Latin. He became a professor of Hebrew and Rhetoric at the Jesuit College in Rome and in 1622 edited a Syriac-Latin dictionary (Nomenclator Syriacus).