Ignacio Jordán Claudio de Asso y del Río

Who was Ignacio Jordán Claudio de Asso y del Río?

Ignacio Jordán Claudio de Asso y del Río was a Spanish diplomat, naturalist, lawyer and historian. He sometimes used the pseudonym of Melchor de Azagra.

Of noble birth, he received an excellent education, studying Classical Greek and Latin in the college known as the Escuelas Pías of Zaragoza and philosophy under the Jesuits at the Real e Imperial Colegio de Nobles de Nuestra Señora y Santiago de Cordellas, located in Barcelona. He studied at the university at Cervera, where he graduated with a bachelor of arts in 1760 and at the University of Zaragoza, where he studied jurisprudence, graduating in 1764.

He worked as a jurist from 1765 to 1776 and traveled for three years across Europe and from 1771 to 1775 he published in Madrid, collaboratively and also alone, a massive work on jurisprudence.

In 1776, he began work as a diplomat and served as consul at Dunkirk, consul general at Amsterdam and consul at Bordeaux. While a diplomat, he concerned himself with scientific and economic matters, and published in Amsterdam works on the botany, zoology, and mineralogy of Aragon. He described for the first time the fish Argyrosomus regius and Salaria fluviatilis.