Cesare Lombroso was an Italian physician, psychiatrist, and criminologist, widely regarded as the founder of the positivist school of criminology. In his seminal work L’uomo delinquente (The Criminal Man, 1876), he introduced the controversial theory of the “born criminal,” arguing that criminal tendencies could be identified through physical anomalies or stigmata. Lombroso’s biological determinism laid the foundation for biological positivism and shaped criminological and penal discourse in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Although his theories have since been discredited, Lombroso remains a central figure in the history of criminology.
