Joseph Nicolai Laurenti

Joseph Nicolai Laurenti (December 4, 1735 - February 17, 1805) was an Austrian naturalist.

Laurenti was the author of Specimen Medicum, Exhibens Synopsin Reptilium Emendatam cum Experimentis circa Venena (1768) on the poisonous function of reptiles and amphibians. This was an important book in herpetology, defining thirty kinds of reptiles. Carolus Linnaeus's Systema naturae of 1758 defined only ten kinds.