University of Catania, studying cestodes, the life cycle of the European eel (Catania) and the Moray eel (Rome). Also in Catania he began to study entomology and wrote a student text "The Origin and Descent of Myriapods and Insects" in addition to scientific papers. He also began to study malaria working with Raimondo Feletti on malaria, especially bird malaria. In 1895 he was appointed professor of comparative anatomy at Sapienza University of Rome, where he would spend the rest of his life. He joined Angelo Celli, Amico Bignami, Giuseppe Bastianelli and Ettore Marchiafava, who were working on malaria in districts around Rome. Grassi was the group's entomologist. The group announced at the session of the Accademia dei Lincei on 4 December 1889 that a healthy man in a non-malarial zone had contracted tertian malaria after being bitten by an experimentally infected Anopheles claviger. Between 1900 and 1902, Grassi, Gustavo Pittaluga and Giovanni Noè made intensive studies of malaria at Agro Portuense, at Fiumicino, on the Tiber, and on the plain of Capaccio, near Paestum. In 1902, Grassi abandoned his study of malaria and began work on the sandfly responsible for Leishmaniasis (Phlebotomus papatasii) and on a serious insect pest of the grape vine (Phylloxera vastatrix ). Endemic malaria returned to Italy during and after the First World War and Grassi resumed his mosquito studies. He died in Rome in 1925 while reading the proof of his last paper, Lezione sulla malaria. Following his will, he was interred at a village cemetery in Fiumicino, a commune in the province of Rome, as he achieved his most important medical research there. His wife Maria (1860–1942) and daughter Isabella were also interred at the same tomb. Professional achievements Anatomy and entomology Grassi's earlier works were on anatomy and then entomology. He studied the development of the vertebral column in bony fishes and also endemic goiter. His studies on bees, myriapods and termites were monumental. He also studied the chetognates and the reproduction of eels, and he described a new species of spider, Koenenia mirabilis in 1885, dedicated to his wife. He also made significant contribution to the study of the phylloxera of grapes, which he pursued for several years. The notes of his observations La questione fillosserica in Italia (1904) influenced the Italian Ministry of Agriculture, which eventually requested him to do an exhaustive study of this subject. In 1912 he produced a