Yidali Hanxuejia shuxuejia Waka de Zhongguo zhixing - ba Zhongguo kexue jieshao dao xifang 意大利汉学家数学家华家的中国之行 / 把中国科学介绍到西方 The Italian sinologist and Mathematician Giovanni Vacca in China: A contribution to the Understanding of Chinese Sciences in the West

【Abstract】Giovanni Vacca (1872-1953) was an Italian mathematician and sinologist. He left from Genoa - Italy in 1907 to spend two years in China on a research and exploratory trip, with the support of the International Association for the Exploration of Central and East Asia. Back to Italy, in October 1908 he left a great amount of documentation and evidence about Sino-Italian relations at the beginning of XX century. This constitutes a valuable knowledge on a country nearly unknown at the time and bound to be object of preconceptions due to the lack of contacts between China and Italy and to a very low awareness of places and people living there. It’s undoubtedly a considerable heritage for Italian sinology. The present paper is meant to describe in the first part Vacca’s trip and his impressions about China as inferred from the many manuscripts he left and that were transcribed and analysed in the book Viaggio in Cina 1907-1908 – Diario di Giovanni Vacca, L’Asino d’Oro, Roma 2016 (Trip to China 1907-1908 – Giovanni Vacca’s diary). The second part of the paper  focuses on the important role that the Italian scholar has played in the analysis and spread of principles and knowledge on Chinese science in the Western world.