Molina was a member of the Society of Jesus.
https://www.amazon.com/Saggio-Historia-Giovanni-Ignazio-Italian/dp/1275452175/ref=sr_1_9?keywords=Juan+Ignacio+Molina&qid=1583139849&sr=8-9
1782
https://www.amazon.com/Geographical-Natural-Civil-History-Chili-ebook/dp/B07RQK2S27/ref=sr_1_33?keywords=Juan+Ignacio+Molina&qid=1583139849&sr=8-33
1801
https://www.amazon.com/Memorie-storia-naturale-lette-Bologna/dp/B00QVMKY9I/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=Memorie+di+storia+naturale+lette+in+Bologna&qid=1583143202&sr=8-3
1821
https://www.amazon.com/Cantos-Loor-Abate-Ignacio-Molina/dp/1246524082/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Juan+Ignacio+Molina&qid=1583139849&sr=8-1
1861
Botanist geographer historian naturalist ornithologist
Juan Ignacio Molina was born on June 24, 1740, in Guaraculén, at a farm near Villa Alegre, General Captaincy of Chile (now Maule, Chile) to the family of Agustín Molina and Francisca González Bruna. Orphaned in his childhood, he went to Talca to live with his relatives.
Molina received his early education at Talca; when he was fifteen, he entered the Jesuit affiliated college at the Pontificia Universidad Pencopolitana de La Concepción, where he studied languages and the natural sciences.
Given his academic excellence - especially in languages - Juan Ignacio Molina was accepted to Jesuit order at fifteen years of age. He then was and was made a librarian of the college, but in 1768 he had to leave Chile because of the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Spanish dominions.
For around two years Molina stayed at Imola, Italy together with other expelled Jesuits. Molina received holy orders upon arrival there; and in 1774 he was appointed a professor of Greek language and then of natural sciences in 1803 at the University of Bologna, where he wrote most of his works. Molina, who remains the classic author on the natural history of Chile, incorporated the observations of A. F. Frézier and Feuillée in the 1776 revised edition of his Compendio. He wrote Saggio sulla Storia Naturale del Chili (1782), which was the first account of the natural history of that country, and in which he described many species new to science. This work was contained in a volume of 246 pages with a map of Chile and ten sheets that represent a Chilean palm, an araucaria pine, birds, quadrupeds and cetaceans, cattle slaughter, the game of the Chueca, a Mapuche dance, ladies in a visiting suit, and a map of the city of Santiago. Molina, since then, did not stop working to make Chile known in Europe, a task that comforted him in his exile. In 1778 he opened a school in Bologna for the children of noble families.
Juan Ignacio Molina is remembered as one of the first Chilean scientists. As an expression of its gratitude, Chile named the town of Molina after him. Ruiz and Pavón dedicated to him the plant genus Molina, later considered a subgenus of Baccharis by Wilhelm Heering (Reiche 1902), and recently recreated as Neomolina by F.H. Hellwig and ranked as a genus. Other authors dedicated Moliniopsis, a genus of Gramineae, as a synonym of Molinia Schrank (nomen illegitimum). Molina has also been linked to the naming of the genus Maytenus. A species of Chilean lizard, Liolaemus molinai, is named in his honor.
Molina's whole career was connected with being a Catholic monk.
Some of Molina's lectures maintained the analogy of the matter of living organisms and of minerals and the idea of the evolution of human beings, and he was censured by his superiors.
Molina was a member of the Society of Jesus.
Juan Ignacio Molina was highly talented in languages except for his native Spanish he also could speak and write Latin, Ancient Greek, and Italian, which is a language in which his first work was written.
Being a Catholic monk Molina didn't have a wife or children.
