Botanist, zoologist and physician, Linnaeus was born on May 23, 1707, in Smaland, in Southern Sweden. He showed an interest in plants from an early age, a pastime encouraged by his father Nils, a Lutheran minister who was also an amateur botanist with a special love for flowers. He would often gift his child with them, teaching him their various names, and eventually giving the young Linnaeus a small patch of garden in which to grow and cultivate his own flower patch.
Early Years
At the age of seven, a tutor was hired to educate the young Linnaeus, an unsuccessful attempt, which ended in him stating that the tutor was better at ‘extinguishing a child’s talents than developing them’. He was then sent to a school in the town of Vaxjo, where his father hoped that he would follow in his footsteps, becoming a clergyman.
However, Linnaues was not scholarly, and spent much of his time outdoors, studying the plants in the vicinity. In his final year of primary school, his headmaster, also interested in botany, noted Linnaeus’s interest and allowed him free reign of his garden. At the same time he introduced the young boy to Johan Rothman, a teacher at the school’s gymnasium. Rothman was a doctor as well as a keen botanist, and it was from him that Linnaeus learned about medicine.
The Importance of the Study of Plants
While most of Linnaues’s teachers believed that he would never be a scholar, Rothman believed otherwise, and offered Linnaues the opportunity to reside with him and his family while he taught the young man physiology and botany. The offer was accepted. Rothman taught Linnaeus about the sexuality of plants, and also how to classify them according to Tournefort’s system. It was here that he learned just how important botany as a subject was.
At the age of 21, Linnaeus enrolled in Lund University in Southern Sweden, where he registered his name in its full Latin form, which he also used for all of his later publications, which he wrote in Latin. After a year, he moved to Uppsala University, near Stockholm, where he began scientific research. He also spent some time in Lappland, studying the plants and animals of the region. After several years of studying at Uppsala, he went to the Netherlands and received his Doctorate of Medicine, at Hardewijk University.
System Naturae
In the same year as he received his Doctorate, Linnaeus published the System Naturae, which was a description of how he classified plants and animals, with each plant or animal having two Latin names; one for its kind or species, and the other for its group, or genus. This simplified the work of scientists, enabling them to easily recognise the classification of a plant or animal, irrespective of its common name.
In 1738 Linnaeus returned to Sweden. While abroad, he had become very influential among European scientists who quickly accepted his methods of classifying plants, minerals and animals. He was appointed physician to the King of Sweden, and professor of medicine and natural history at Uppsala University. The System Naturae was only the beginning of both his work and his writing on the classification of the natural world.
Later Years
In 1751, Linnaeus published the Philosophia Botanica and in 1753, the Species Plantarum, the latter which is considered the beginning of botanical nomenclature, which is the naming of scientific plant classification, similar but not identical to, taxonomy, which is the actual grouping of the plants. In the same year, he was given the distinction of knight of the Order of the Polar Star, the first Swedish civilian to receive this honour.
In 1758, Linnaeus left Uppsala and bought two family farms, where he started a garden for specific plants that could not be grown at the Botanical Gardens. He also began the construction of a museum and moved his library, as well as his considerable plant collection. He was granted nobility by the Swedish king in 1761, at which time he took the name Carl von Linne.
Linnaeus died in 1778, after having earned the title ‘prince of botanists’, and his collection of dried plants, at the time the largest in the world and consisting of 14000 plants, 3198 insects and 1564 different varieties of shells (as well as the library, which consisted of 1600 books and 3000 letters) was sold to a 24-year-old medical student, James Edward Smith, who went on to find the Linnean Society of London, five years later.
Sources:
- Roller, Duane Book of Knowledge Grolier Enterprises (1982)
- von Linne, Carl The Families of Plants University of Michigan Library (2007)
- Greene, Edward Carolus Linnaeus Kessinger Publishing (2007)
- Farber, Paul Finding Order in Nature John Hopkins University Press (2000)
Mellissa Bushby - Mellissa Bushby is an author, illustrator and ceramicist. She studied Fine Art for four years, and her newest book release is January ...
