Vincenzo Mortillaro

Vincenzo Mortillaro (27 July 1806 - 28 July 1888) was a Sicilian scholar best known today for his Sicilian-Italian dictionary, which included vocabulary of the sciences, arts and trades. In his dictionary, he attempted to record the language universally spoken across Sicily in a common orthography. He also published research on mathematics, linguistics, history, archaelogy and paleography.

After teaching Arabic at the University of Palermo, he served the Bourbon administration until the Sicilian revolution of 1848, during which he entered the new Parliament. Nonetheless, after the Bourbon restoration, he was appointed Intendant of the Province of Palermo, a position that he held until 1860, when Giuseppe Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand overthrew the Bourbons and began the process of Italian Unification. He then retired from public service and dedicated the rest of his career to scholarship.[1]