Giovanni Virgilio Schiaparelli

Wikipedia Biographical Summary:

"...Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli (14 March 1835 – 4 July 1910) was an Italian astronomer and science historian.

He was educated at the University of Turin, and later studied at Berlin Observatory, under Encke. In 1859-1860 he worked in Pulkovo Observatory and then worked for over forty years at Brera Observatory. He was also a senator of the Kingdom of Italy, a member of the Accademia dei Lincei, the Accademia delle Scienze di Torino and the Regio Istituto Lombardo, and is particularly known for his studies of Mars.

Among Schiaparelli's contributions are his telescopic observations of Mars. In his initial observations, he named the "seas" and "continents" of Mars. During the planet's "Great Opposition" of 1877, he observed a dense network of linear structures on the surface of Mars which he called "canali" in Italian, meaning "channels" but the term was mistranslated into English as "canals."

While the term "canals" indicates an artificial construction, the term "channels" connotes that the observed features were natural configurations of the planetary surface..."

SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Schiaparelli