Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) - Swedish naturalist, naturalist, botanist, doctor, founder of modern biological taxonomy, creator of the system of flora and fauna, first president of the Swedish Academy of Sciences (since 1739), foreign honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1754). For the first time, he consistently applied binary nomenclature and constructed the most successful artificial classification of plants and animals, describing about 1,500 plant species. Carl Linnaeus defended the constancy of species and creationism. Author of “System of Nature” (1735), “Philosophy of Botany” (1751), etc.
In natural science, principles must be confirmed by observations.
Linnaeus Karl
Carl Linnaeus was born May 23, 1707, in Roshult. Linnaeus was the first-born in the family of a rural pastor and florist, Nils Linneus. Linnaeus's father Ingemarson replaced his surname with the Latinized surname "Linneus" after the giant linden tree (in Swedish Lind) that grew near the family home. Having moved from Rosshult to neighboring Stenbrohult (province of Småland in Southern Sweden), Nils planted a beautiful garden, about which Linnaeus said: “this garden inflamed my mind with an unquenchable love for plants.”
His passion for plants distracted Carl Linnaeus from his homework. His parents hoped that studying in the neighboring town of Växjö would cool down Karl’s ardent passion. However, in elementary school (from 1716), and then in the gymnasium (from 1724), the boy studied poorly. He neglected theology and was considered the worst student of ancient languages. Only the need to read Pliny's Natural History and the works of modern botanists forced him to study Latin, the universal language of science of that time. Dr. Rothman introduced Karl to these works. Encouraging the gifted young man's interest in botany, he prepared him for university.
Nature, with the help of art, sometimes creates miracles.
Linnaeus Karl
In August 1727, twenty-year-old Carl Linnaeus became a student at Lund University. Acquaintance with the herbarium collections of the natural cabinet of Professor Stobeus prompted Linnaeus to conduct a detailed study of the flora of the surrounding area of Lund, and by December 1728 he compiled a catalog of rare plants “Catalogus Plantarum Rariorum Scaniae et Smolandiae”.
In the same year, Carl Linnaeus continued his study of medicine at Uppsala University, where friendly communication with student Peter Artedi (later a famous ichthyologist) brightened up the dryness of the course of lectures on natural history. Joint excursions with the theologian professor O. Celsius, who helped the financially poor Linnaeus, and studies in his library expanded Linnaeus’s botanical horizons, and he was indebted to the benevolent professor O. Rudbeck Jr. not only for the beginning of his teaching career, but also for the idea of traveling to Lapland (May -September 1732).
The purpose of this expedition was to study all three kingdoms of nature - minerals, plants and animals - the vast and little-studied region of Fennoscandia, as well as the life and customs of the Laplanders (Sami). The results of the four-month journey were first summarized by Linnaeus in a short work in 1732; The complete Flora lapponica, one of Linnaeus's most famous works, was published in 1737.
In 1734 Carl Linnaeus traveled to Sweden the province of Dalecarlia at the expense of the governor of this province, and later, having settled in Falun, he was engaged in mineralogy and assay business. Here he first began practicing medicine, and also found himself a bride. Linnaeus's engagement to the daughter of the doctor Moreus took place on the eve of the groom's departure to Holland, where Linnaeus was going as a candidate for a doctorate in medicine in order to be able to support his family (a requirement of his future father-in-law).
Having successfully defended his dissertation on intermittent fever (fever) at the university in Gardewijk on June 24, 1735, K. Linnaeus plunged into the study of the richest natural science rooms in Amsterdam. Then he went to Leiden, where he published one of his most important works - “Systema naturae” (“System of Nature”, 1735). It was a summary of the kingdoms of minerals, plants and animals, presented in tables on only 14 pages, albeit in a sheet format. Linnaeus classified plants into 24 classes, basing the classification on the number, size and location of stamens and pistils.
The new system turned out to be practical and allowed even amateurs to identify plants, especially since Linnaeus streamlined the terms of descriptive morphology and introduced a binary nomenclature to designate species, which simplified the search and identification of both plants and animals. Subsequently, Carl Linnaeus supplemented his work, and the last lifetime (12th) edition consisted of 4 books and 2335 pages. Linnaeus himself recognized himself as the chosen one, called upon to interpret the Creator's plan, but only the recognition of the famous Dutch physician and naturalist Hermann Boerhaave opened the path to fame for him.
After Leiden, Carl Linnaeus lived in Amsterdam with the director of the Botanical Garden, studying plants and creating scientific works. Soon, on the recommendation of Boerhaave, he received a position as a family physician and head of the botanical garden with the director of the East India Company and burgomaster of Amsterdam G. Clifford. During two years (1736-1737) spent in Hartekamp (near Haarlem), where the rich man and plant lover Clifford created an extensive collection of plants from all over the world, Linnaeus published a number of works that brought him European fame and unquestioned authority among botanists. In a small book “Fundamente Botanicc” (“Fundamentals of Botany”), composed of 365 aphorisms (according to the number of days in the year), Linnaeus outlined the principles and ideas that guided him in his work as a systematic botanist. In the famous aphorism “we count as many species as the different forms that were first created,” he expressed his belief in the constancy of the number and immutability of species since their creation (later he allowed the emergence of new species as a result of crossings between already existing species). Here is an interesting classification of botanists themselves.
The works “Genera plantarun” (“Genera of Plants”) and “Critica Botanica” are devoted to the establishment and description of genera (994) and problems of botanical nomenclature, and “Bibliotheca Botanica” is devoted to botanical bibliography. Carl Linnaeus's systematic description of the Clifford botanical garden - "Hortus Сliffortianus" (1737) for a long time became a model for such works. In addition, Linnaeus published the “Ichthyology” of his untimely deceased friend Artedi, preserving for science the work of one of the founders of ichthyology.
Returning to his homeland in the spring of 1738, Linnaeus married and settled in Stockholm, practicing medicine, teaching and science.
In 1739 he became one of the founders of the Royal Academy of Sciences and its first president, receiving the title of “royal botanist”.
In May 1741 Carl Linnaeus traveled to Gotland and to the island of Holland, and in October of the same year, with a lecture “On the need to travel around the fatherland,” his professorship at Uppsala University began. Many people sought to study botany and medicine in Uppsala. The number of university students tripled, and in the summer it increased many times thanks to the famous excursions, which ended with a solemn procession and a loud cry of “Vivat Linnaeus!” by all its participants.
In 1742, Linnaeus restored the university Botanical Garden, which was almost destroyed by fire, housing a particularly vibrant collection of Siberian plants. The rarities sent from all continents by his traveling students were also grown here.
In 1751, Philosophia Botanica (Philosophy of Botany) was published, and in 1753, probably the most significant and important work for botany by Carl Linnaeus, Species plantarum (Species of Plants).
Surrounded by admiration, showered with honors, elected an honorary member of many learned societies and Academies, including St. Petersburg (1754), elevated to the nobility in 1757, Linnaeus, in his declining years acquired the small estate of Hammarby, where he spent time peacefully tending to his own garden and collections . Carl Linnaeus died in Uppsala in the seventy-first year.
In 1783, after the death of Linnaeus's son, Karl, his widow sold the herbarium, collections, manuscripts and library of the scientist for 1000 guineas to England. In 1788, the Linnean Society was established in London, and its first president, J. Smith, became the main custodian of the collections. Designed to become a center for the study of Linnaeus's scientific heritage, it continues to fulfill this role today.
Thanks to Carl Linnaeus, plant science became one of the most popular in the second half of the 18th century. Linnaeus himself was recognized as the “chief of botanists,” although many contemporaries condemned the artificiality of his system. His merit consisted in streamlining the almost chaotic diversity of forms of living organisms into a clear and observable system. He described more than 10,000 species of plants and 4,400 species of animals (including Homo sapiens). Linnaeus' binomial nomenclature remains the basis of modern taxonomy.
The Linnian names of plants in Species plantarum (Species of Plants, 1753) and animals in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae (1758) are legal, and both dates are officially recognized as the beginning of modern botanical and zoological nomenclature. The Linnaean principle ensured the universality and continuity of the scientific names of plants and animals and ensured the flowering of taxonomy. Linnaeus' passion for taxonomy and classification was not limited to plants - he also classified minerals, soils, diseases, and human races. He wrote a number of medical works. Unlike scientific works written in Latin, Carl Linnaeus wrote his travel notes in his native language. They are considered an example of this genre in Swedish prose. (A.K. Sytin)
More about Carl Linnaeus:
Carl Linnaeus, the famous Swedish naturalist, was born in Sweden, in the village of Rosgult. He was of humble origin, his ancestors were simple peasants; Father Nile Linneus was a poor rural priest. The next year after the birth of his son, he received a more profitable parish in Stenbrogult, where Carl Linnaeus spent his entire childhood until he was ten years old.
My father was a great lover of flowers and gardening; in picturesque Stenbrogult he planted a garden, which soon became the first in the entire province. This garden and his father’s activities played, of course, a significant role in the spiritual development of the future founder of scientific botany. The boy was given a special corner in the garden, several beds, where he was considered the complete master; They were called that way - “Karl’s kindergarten”.
When the boy was ten years old, he was sent to elementary school in the town of Vexier. The gifted child’s schoolwork was going poorly; Karl continued to study botany with enthusiasm, and preparing lessons was tiresome for him. The father was about to take the young man from the gymnasium, but chance brought him into contact with the local doctor Rothman. He was a good friend of the head of the school where Linnaeus began his teaching, and from him he knew about the boy’s exceptional talents. Rotman’s classes for the “underachieving” high school student went better. The doctor began to introduce him little by little to medicine and even - despite the teachers' comments - made him fall in love with Latin.
After graduating from high school, Karl entered Lund University, but soon transferred from there to one of the most prestigious universities in Sweden - Uppsala. Linnaeus was only 23 years old when botany professor Oluas Celsius took him as his assistant, after which, while still a student, Karl began teaching at the university.
A trip to Lapland became very significant for the young scientist. Carl Linnaeus walked almost 700 kilometers, collected significant collections and as a result published his first book, “Flora of Lapland.”
In the spring of 1735 Linnaeus arrived in Holland, to Amsterdam. In the small university town of Gardervik, he passed the exam and on June 24 defended his dissertation on a medical topic - about fever, which he had written in Sweden. The immediate goal of his journey was achieved, but Karl remained. Fortunately for himself and for science, rich and highly cultured Holland remained, serving as the cradle for his passionate creative activity and his loud fame.
One of his new friends, Doctor Gronov, suggested that he publish some work, then Linnaeus compiled and published the first draft of his famous work, which laid the foundation for systematic zoology and botany in the modern sense. This was the first edition of his “Systema naturae”, which so far contained only 14 pages of a huge format, on which brief descriptions of minerals, plants and animals were grouped in the form of tables. This edition begins a series of rapid scientific successes of Linnaeus.
His new works, published in 1736-1737, already contained in a more or less complete form his main and most fruitful ideas - a system of generic and species names, improved terminology, an artificial system of the plant kingdom.
At this time, he received a brilliant offer to become the personal physician of Georg Clifford with a salary of 1000 guilders and full allowance. Clifford was one of the directors of the East India Company (which was then thriving and filling Holland with wealth) and the burgomaster of the city of Amsterdam. And most importantly, Clifford was a passionate gardener, a lover of botany and natural sciences in general. On his estate Garte-kamp, near Haarlem, there was a garden famous in Holland, in which he, regardless of costs and tirelessly, was engaged in the cultivation and acclimatization of foreign plants, - plants of Southern Europe, Asia, Africa, America. In his garden he had herbariums and a rich botanical library. All this contributed to Linnaeus's scientific work.
Despite the successes that surrounded Linnaeus in Holland, little by little he began to be drawn home. In 1738, he returns to his homeland and faces unexpected problems. He, who had been accustomed for three years of life abroad to universal respect, friendship and attentions of the most prominent and famous people, at home, in his homeland, was just a doctor without a place, without practice and without money, and no one cared about his scholarship . So Linnaeus the botanist gave way to Linnaeus the doctor, and his favorite activities were abandoned for a while.
However, already in 1739, the Swedish Diet allocated him one hundred ducats of annual support with the obligation to teach botany and mineralogy. At the same time, he was given the title of “royal botanist.” In the same year, Carl Linnaeus received a position as an Admiralty physician in Stockholm: this position opened up a wide scope for his medical activities.
Finally, K. Linnaeus found an opportunity to get married, and on June 26, 1739, the wedding, which had been postponed for five years, took place. Alas, as often happens with people of outstanding talent, his wife was the complete opposite of her husband. An ill-mannered, rude and quarrelsome woman, without intellectual interests, she valued only the material side of her husband’s brilliant activities; she was a housewife wife, a cook wife. In economic matters, she held power in the house and in this regard had a bad influence on her husband, developing in him a tendency towards stinginess. There was a lot of sadness in their family relationship. Linnaeus had one son and several daughters, his mother loved her daughters, and they grew up under her influence as uneducated and petty girls of a bourgeois family. The mother had a strange antipathy towards her son, a gifted boy, persecuted him in every possible way and tried to turn his father against him. The latter, however, she did not succeed: Linnaeus loved his son and passionately developed in him those inclinations for which he himself suffered so much in childhood.
During a short period of his Stockholm life, Carl Linnaeus took part in the founding of the Stockholm Academy of Sciences. It arose as a private society of several individuals, and the original number of its active members was only six. At its very first meeting, Linnaeus was appointed president by lot.
In 1742, Linnaeus's dream came true and he became a professor of botany at his home university. Under Linnaeus, the botanical department in Uppsala acquired an extraordinary brilliance, which it had never had before or since. The rest of his life was spent in this city almost without a break. He occupied the department for more than thirty years and left it only shortly before his death.
His financial situation becomes strong, Karl has the happiness of seeing the complete triumph of his scientific ideas, the rapid spread and widespread recognition of his teachings. The name Linnaeus was considered among the first names of the time: people like Jean Jacques Rousseau treated him with respect. External successes and honors rained down on him from all sides. In that age - the age of enlightened absolutism and philanthropists - scientists were in fashion, and Carl Linnaeus was one of those advanced minds of the last century who were showered with favors from sovereigns.
The scientist bought himself a small estate, Gammarba, near Uppsala, where he spent his summers in the last 15 years of his life. Foreigners who came to study under his leadership rented apartments in a neighboring village.
Of course now Carl Linnaeus stopped practicing medicine, was engaged only in scientific research. He described all the medicinal plants known at that time and studied the effects of medicines made from them. It is interesting that Linnaeus successfully combined these activities, which seemed to fill all his time, with others. It was during this time that he invented the thermometer using the Celsius temperature scale.
But Linnaeus still considered the systematization of plants to be the main work of his life. The main work, “The Plant System,” took 25 years, and only in 1753 did he publish his main work.
The scientist decided to systematize the entire plant world of the Earth. At the time when Carl Linnaeus began his work, zoology was in a period of exceptional dominance of taxonomy. The task that she then set for herself was simply to become familiar with all the breeds of animals living on the globe, without regard to their internal structure and the connection of individual forms with each other; The subject of zoological writings of that time was a simple listing and description of all known animals.
Thus, zoology and botany of that time were mainly concerned with the study and description of species, but there was boundless confusion in recognizing them. The descriptions that the author gave to new animals or plants were usually so confusing and inaccurate. The second main drawback of the science of that time was the lack of a more or less tolerable and accurate classification.
These main shortcomings of systematic zoology and botany were corrected by the genius of Linnaeus. Remaining on the same ground of study of nature on which his predecessors and contemporaries stood, he became a powerful reformer of science. His merit is purely methodological. He did not discover new areas of knowledge and hitherto unknown laws of nature, but he created a new method, clear, logical, and with his help he brought light and order where chaos and confusion reigned before him, thereby giving a huge impetus to science, powerfully paving the way for further research. This was a necessary step in science, without which further progress would have been impossible.
The scientist proposed a binary nomenclature - a system of scientific names for plants and animals. Based on structural features, he divided all plants into 24 classes, also highlighting individual GENERUS and species. Each name, in his opinion, should have consisted of two words - generic and species designations.
Despite the fact that the principle he applied was quite artificial, it turned out to be very convenient and became generally accepted in scientific classification, retaining its significance in our time. But in order for the new nomenclature to be fruitful, it was necessary that the species given the conventional name should at the same time be so accurately and thoroughly described that they could not be confused with other species of the same genus. Carl Linnaeus did just that: he was the first to introduce into science a strictly defined, precise language and a precise definition of characteristics. His work “Fundamental Botany,” published in Amsterdam during his life with Clifford and the result of seven years of work, sets out the foundations of the botanical terminology that he used when describing plants.
Linnaeus's zoological system did not play such a major role in science as the botanical one, although in some respects it stood above it as less artificial, but it did not represent its main advantages of convenience in definition. Linnaeus had little knowledge of anatomy.
The work of Carl Linnaeus gave a huge impetus to the systematic botany of zoology. The developed terminology and convenient nomenclature made it easier to cope with enormous material, which was previously so difficult to understand. Soon all classes of plants and the animal kingdom were subjected to careful systematic study, and the number of described species increased from hour to hour.
Later, Carl Linnaeus applied his principle to the classification of all nature, in particular minerals and rocks. He also became the first scientist to classify humans and monkeys into the same group of animals - primates. As a result of his observations, the natural scientist compiled another book - “The System of Nature”. Linnaeus worked on it all his life, republishing his work from time to time. In total, the scientist prepared 12 editions of this work, which gradually turned from a small book into a voluminous multi-volume publication
The last years of the life of Carl Linnaeus were overshadowed by senile decrepitude and illness. He died on January 10, 1778, in the seventy-first year of his age.
After his death, the chair of botany at Uppsala University was given to his son, who zealously set about continuing his father’s work. But in 1783 he suddenly fell ill and died in his forty-second year. The son was not married, and with his death the lineage of Linnaeus in the male generation ceased.
More about Carl Linnaeus from another source:
Linnaeus (Carolus Linnaeus, from 1762 Carl Linne) - famous Swedish naturalist, born. in Sweden in Smaland in the village of Rashult in 1707. From early childhood, Carl Linnaeus showed a great love for nature, this was greatly facilitated by the fact that his father, a village priest, was a lover of flowers and gardening.
His parents prepared Charles for the clergy and sent him to primary school in Wexio, where he stayed from 1717 to 1724, but classes at school went poorly. On the advice of the school authorities, who recognized Karl as incapable, the father wanted to take his son out of school and send him to study a trade, but his acquaintance, Dr. Rothmann, convinced him to let his son prepare for medicine. Rothmann, with whom Carl Linnaeus settled, began to introduce him to medicine and works on natural history.
In 1724 - 27, Carl Linnaeus studied at the gymnasium in Vexie, and then entered the university in Lund, but in 1728 he moved to the university in Uppsala to listen to famous professors: Rogberg and Rudbeck. His financial situation was extremely difficult, but then he found support in the learned theologian and botanist Olaus Celsius.
Carl Linnaeus's first article on the field of plants (handwritten) attracted the attention of Rudbeck and in 1730, at his suggestion, part of Rudbeck's lectures was transferred to Linnaeus. In 1732, the scientific society in Uppsala commissioned Karl to explore the nature of Lapland and provided funds for the journey, after which Linnaeus published his first printed work: “Florula Lapponica” (1732). However, K. Linnaeus, as he did not have a diploma, had to leave Uppsala University.
Carl Linnaeus traveled through Dalecarlia with several young people in 1734, mainly at the expense of the governor of this province, Reuterholm, and then settled in the city of Falun, lecturing on mineralogy and assay art and practicing medicine. Here he became engaged to the daughter of Dr. Moreus and partly with his own savings, partly with the funds of his future father-in-law, went to Holland, where in 1735 he defended his dissertation (on intermittent fever) in the city of Harderwick.
Then Carl Linnaeus settled in Leiden and here he published the first edition of his “Systema naturae” (1735) with the assistance of Gronov, whom he met in Holland. This work immediately brought him honorable fame and brought him closer to the then famous professor at Leiden University, Boerhave, thanks to whom Linnaeus received the position of family physician and head of the botanical garden in Hartkamp with the rich man, director of the East India Company, Clifford. This is where Linnaeus settled.
In 1736, he visited London and Oxford, became acquainted with the outstanding English naturalists of the time, with the rich collections of the Elephant (Sloane), etc. During his two-year service with Clifford (1736-1737), Carl Linnaeus published a number of works that brought him enormous fame in the scientific world and contained the main reforms introduced by Linnaeus into science: “Hortus cliffortianus”, “Fundamenta botanica”, “Critica botanica”, “Genera plantarum” (1737), followed by the work “Classes plantarum” (1738).
In 1738, Carl Linnaeus published a work on ichthyology by his friend Artedi (or Peter Arctadius), who died in Amsterdam. Despite his enormous success in Holland, Karl returned to Sweden, visiting Paris. Having settled in Stockholm, he was at first poor, engaged in meager medical practice, but soon gained fame and began to treat at court and in the homes of high-ranking officials. In 1739, the Diet allocated him an annual allowance, with the obligation to lecture on botany and mineralogy, and Carl Linnaeus received the title of “royal botanist.” In the same year, he received the position of doctor of the Admiralty, which, in addition to material security, gave him the opportunity to study rich clinical material, and at the same time he was allowed to autopsy the corpses of those who died in the naval hospital.
In Stockholm Carl Linnaeus took part in the founding of the Academy of Sciences(originally a private company) and was its first president. In 1741 he managed to obtain the chair of anatomy and medicine in Uppsala, and the following year he exchanged chairs with Rosen, who two years earlier had occupied the chair of botany in Uppsala. In Uppsala, he brought the botanical garden into brilliant condition, founded the natural history museum in 1745, published Fauna Suecica in 1746, and Philosophia botanica in 1750.
At the same time, Carl Linnaeus released a number of editions of his “Systema naturae”, gradually supplementing, expanding and improving it (the 2nd edition was published in 1740 in Stockholm, the 12th and the last - during Linnaeus’s lifetime in 1766 - 68, and after after his death, Gmelin published a new, partly revised edition in Leipzig in 1788).
The teaching activities of Carl Linnaeus also had enormous success; the number of students at Uppsala University increased from 500, thanks to Linnaeus, to 1500. Many foreigners came here to listen to him, he took excursions with his students in the vicinity of Uppsala, and later gave many of his students the opportunity to carry out scientific research in various countries. Proud of Carl Linnaeus as an outstanding scientific force, the Swedish kings showered him with honors; in 1757 he received the nobility, to which he was confirmed in 1762 (and his surname was changed to Linne).
Carl Linnaeus received honorable and lucrative offers to Madrid and St. Petersburg (even earlier in 1741, Albrecht Haller offered him to take a chair in Göttingen), but rejected them. In 1763 Linnaeus was elected a member of the French Academy. In 1774 he suffered a stroke, and two years later another one made it impossible for him to continue his activities and he died in 1778.
In recent years, Carl Linnaeus lived on the Gammarby estate, passing on his lectures to his son Carl, who after his death took the chair of botany in Uppsala, but died almost at the beginning of his scientific career, in 1783. Linnaeus's collections and library were sold after his death to England (Smith) by his wife.
The scientific achievements of Carl Linnaeus are extremely important. He introduced precise terminology into the descriptions of plants and animals, while before him the descriptions were characterized by such uncertainty and confusion that an exact definition of animals and plants was impossible, and descriptions of new forms became more and more confusing due to the impossibility of deciding whether a given form was really not was described previously.
Another important merit of Carl Linnaeus is the introduction of double nomenclature: Linnaeus designates each species with two terms: the name of the genus and the name of the species (for example, tiger, leopard, wild cat belong to the genus cat (Felis) and are designated by the names Felis tigris, Felis pardus, Felis catus). This brief, precise nomenclature replaced the previous descriptions and diagnoses that designated individual forms in the absence of precise names for them, and thus eliminated many difficulties.
Its first use was made by Carl Linnaeus in his work “Pan suecicus” (1749). At the same time, taking the concept of species (which Linnaeus considered constant) as the starting point in systematics, Karl accurately defined the relationship between various systematic groups (class, order, genus, species and variety - before him these names were used incorrectly and were not used with them). associated with certain ideas). At the same time, he gave a new classification for plants, which, although it was artificial (which Linnaeus himself was aware of), was very convenient for putting in order the accumulated factual material (the scientist indicated in “Philosophia botanica” natural groups of plants corresponding to modern families ; in some cases he even deviated from his system, not wanting to violate the natural relationships of known species).
Carl Linnaeus divided the animal kingdom into 6 classes: mammals, birds, reptiles (= modern reptiles + amphibians), fish, insects (= modern arthropods) and worms. The most unsuccessful is the last group, which combines representatives of the most diverse groups. Linnaeus' system also contains some improvements compared to the previous ones (for example, cetaceans are classified as mammals). But, although in his classification he adhered primarily to external signs, his division into main groups is based on anatomical facts.
Carrying out these reforms in systematics, Linnaeus put in order all the factual material on botany and zoology that had accumulated before him and was in a chaotic state, and thereby greatly contributed to the further growth of scientific knowledge.
Carl Linnaeus - quotes
In natural science, principles must be confirmed by observations. 
The eternal, infinite, omniscient and omnipotent God passed me by. I did not see Him face to face, but the glimpse of the Divine filled my soul with silent wonder. I saw the trace of God in His creation; and everywhere, even in the smallest and most imperceptible of His works, what power, what wisdom, what indescribable perfection! I observed how animate beings, standing at the highest level, are connected with the kingdom of plants, and plants, in turn, with minerals that are in the depths of the globe, and how the globe itself gravitates towards the sun and revolves around it in an invariable order, receiving life from him. System of nature.
Nature doesn't make a leap.
With the help of art, nature creates miracles.
Minerals exist, plants live and grow, animals live, grow and feel.
Carl Linnaeus
Linnaeus Karl (1707-1778), Swedish naturalist, creator of the system of flora and fauna, first president of the Swedish Academy of Sciences (from 1739), foreign honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1754). For the first time he consistently applied binary nomenclature and constructed the most successful artificial classification of plants and animals, described approx. 1500 plant species. He defended the constancy of species and creationism. Author of “System of Nature” (1735), “Philosophy of Botany” (1751), etc.
Linnaeus Karl (1707-78) - Swedish naturalist, formulated the foundations of plant taxonomy, the creation of which is his main scientific merit. Despite the fact that this system was artificial, the binomial naming principle introduced by Linnaeus retained its meaning and became generally accepted. Being a supporter creationism, Linnaeus also suggested the hybrid origin of some forms and allowed limited variability of species under the influence of the conditions of their existence.
Philosophical Dictionary. Ed. I.T. Frolova. M., 1991, p. 222.
Linne (Linne, Linnaeus), Karl (1707-1778) - Swedish naturalist and naturalist. Born in Roshult. He received his education at Uppsala University. From 1741 until the end of his life, he taught a number of biological and medical disciplines and headed the department at this university. The center of Linnaeus' scientific interests was botany, but he dealt with a wide range of natural science issues - zoology, mining and mineralogy, medicine, etc. Linnaeus's main achievement was the creation of systems for classifying plants and animals. Its first presentation was presented by Linnaeus in the book “System of Nature”.
Philosophical Dictionary / author's comp. S. Ya. Podoprigora, A. S. Podoprigora. - Ed. 2nd, erased - Rostov n/a: Phoenix, 2013, p. 193.
Famous naturalist
Carl Linnaeus, the famous naturalist, was born in Sweden, in the village of Rozgult, on May 13, 1707. He was of humble origin, his ancestors were simple peasants; father, Nile Linneus, was a village priest. My father was a great lover of flowers and gardening; in picturesque Stenbrogult he planted a garden, which soon became the first in the entire province. This garden and his father’s activities played, of course, a significant role in the spiritual development of the future founder of scientific botany. The boy was given a special corner in the garden, several beds, where he was considered the complete master; They were called that way - “Karl’s kindergarten”.
When the boy was ten years old, he was sent to elementary school in the town of Vexier.
After graduating from high school, Karl entered Lund University, but soon transferred from there to one of the most prestigious universities in Sweden - Uppsala.
June 24, 1735 in the university town of Harderwick, in Holland Linnaeus passed the exam and defended his dissertation on a medical topic - about fever, which he wrote in Sweden. At the same time, Linnaeus compiled and published the first draft of his work, which laid the foundation for systematic zoology. This was the first edition of his "Systema naturae". His new works, published in 1736-1737, already contained in a more or less complete form his main and most fruitful ideas: a system of generic and species names, improved terminology, an artificial system of the plant kingdom.
At this time, he received an offer to become the personal physician of Georg Clifford with a salary of 1000 guilders and full allowance. Clifford was one of the directors of the East India Company and burgomaster of Amsterdam. He was a passionate gardener and a lover of botany. On his estate there was a garden famous in Holland, in which he cultivated and acclimatized plants from Southern Europe, Asia, Africa, and America.
In 1739, the Swedish Diet allocated him one hundred ducats of annual support with the obligation to teach botany and mineralogy. At the same time, he was given the title of “royal botanist”. Linnaeus took part in the founding of the Stockholm Academy of Sciences and was its first president. In 1742, Linnaeus became a professor of botany at his home university. The scientist bought himself a small estate, Gammarba, near Uppsala, where he spent his summers in the last 15 years of his life. He described all the medicinal plants known at that time and studied the effects of medicines made from them. It was during this time that he invented the thermometer using the Celsius temperature scale.
The main work, “The Plant System,” took as long as 25 years, and only in 1753 did Linnaeus publish his main work.
At the time when Linnaeus began his work, zoology was in a period of exceptional dominance of taxonomy. The task that she then set for herself was to become familiar with all the breeds of animals living on the globe, without regard to their internal structure and the connection of individual forms with each other. The descriptions that the author gave of new animals or plants were usually inaccurate. The second main drawback of the science of that time was the lack of classification.
The scientist proposed a binary nomenclature - a system of scientific names for plants and animals. Based on structural features, he divided all plants into 24 classes, also highlighting individual genera and species. Each name had to consist of two words - generic and species designations.
Linnaeus was the first to introduce into science a strictly defined, precise language and precise definition of characteristics. His work “Fundamental Botany,” published in Amsterdam during his life with Clifford and the result of seven years of work, sets out the foundations of the botanical terminology that he used when describing plants.
Linnaeus later applied his principle to the classification of all nature, in particular minerals and rocks. He also became the first scientist to classify humans and monkeys into the same group of animals - primates. As a result of his observations, the natural scientist compiled another book - “The System of Nature”.
The last years of Linnaeus's life were overshadowed by senile decrepitude and illness. He died on January 10, 1778, in the seventy-first year of his age.
Used materials from the site http://100top.ru/encyclopedia/
Swedish naturalist
LINNEAUS, CARL (Linnaeus, Carolus, also Linn, Carl von) (1707–1778), Swedish naturalist, "father of modern botanical taxonomy" and creator of modern biological nomenclature. Born on May 23, 1707 in Roshult in the province of Småland in the family of a village pastor. His parents wanted Karl to become a clergyman, but from his youth he was fascinated by natural history, especially botany. These activities were encouraged by a local doctor, who advised Linnaeus to choose a medical profession, since at that time botany was considered a part of pharmacology. In 1727, Linnaeus entered the University of Lund, and the following year he moved to Uppsala University, where the teaching of botany and medicine was better. In Uppsala he lived and worked with Olaf Celsius, a theologian and amateur botanist who participated in the preparation of the book Biblical Botany (Hierobotanicum), a list of plants mentioned in the Bible. In 1729, as a New Year's gift to Celsius, Linnaeus wrote the essay Introduction to the Engagements of Plants (Praeludia sponsalorum plantarun), in which he poetically described their sexual process. This work not only delighted Celsius, but also aroused the interest of university teachers and students. It predetermined the main range of Linnaeus' future interests - the classification of plants according to their reproductive organs. In 1731, having defended his dissertation, Linnaeus became an assistant to professor of botany O. Rudbeck. The following year he traveled to Lapland. For three months he wandered around this then wild country, collecting plant samples. The Uppsala Scientific Society, which subsidized this work, published only a short report about it - Flora Lapponica. Linnaeus's detailed work on the plants of Lapland was published only in 1737, and his vividly written diary of the expedition Lapland Life (Lachesis Lapponica) was published after the author's death in a Latin translation. In 1733–1734, Linnaeus lectured and conducted scientific work at the university, and wrote a number of books and articles. However, pursuing a medical career traditionally required obtaining an advanced degree abroad. In 1735 he entered the University of Harderwijk in Holland, where he soon received his doctorate in medicine. In Holland, he became close to the famous Leiden doctor G. Boerhaave, who recommended Linnaeus to the burgomaster of Amsterdam, Georg Clifford, a passionate gardener, who by that time had collected a magnificent collection of exotic plants. Clifford made Linnaeus his personal physician and instructed him to identify and classify the specimens he bred. The result was the excellent treatise Clifford's Garden (Hortus Cliffortianus), published in 1737.
In 1736–1738, the first editions of many of Linnaeus’s works were published in Holland: in 1736 – System of Nature (Systema naturae), Botanical Library (Bibliotheca botanica) and Fundamentals of Botany (Fundamenta botanica); in 1737 – Critique of botany (Critica botanica), Genera of plants (Genera plantarum), Flora of Lapland (Flora Lapponica) and Cliffortian garden (Hortus Cliffortianus); in 1738 – Classes plantarum, Collection of genera (Corollarium generum) and Sexual method (Methodus sexualist). In addition, in 1738 Linnaeus edited a book on fish, Ichthyologia, which remained unfinished after the death of his friend Peter Artedi. Botanical works, especially plant genera, formed the basis of modern plant taxonomy. In them, Linnaeus described and applied a new classification system that greatly simplified the identification of organisms. In his method, which he called "sexual", the main emphasis was on the structure and number of reproductive structures of plants, i.e. stamens (male organs) and pistils (female organs). Although Linnaeus's classification is largely artificial, it was so much more convenient than all the systems existing at that time that it soon received universal recognition. Its rules were formulated so simply and clearly that they seemed to be the laws of nature, and Linnaeus himself, of course, considered them as such. However, his views on the sexual process in plants, although they were not original, also found their critics: some accused Linnaeus’s teaching of immorality, others of excessive anthropomorphism.
An even more daring work than botanical work was the famous System of Nature. Its first edition of about a dozen printed pages, representing a general outline of the intended book, was an attempt to distribute all the creations of nature - animals, plants and minerals - into classes, orders, genera and species, and also to establish rules for their identification. Corrected and expanded editions of this treatise were published 12 times during Linnaeus's life and were reprinted several times after his death.
In 1738, Linnaeus, on behalf of Clifford, visited the botanical centers of England. By that time, he had already earned international recognition among naturalists and received invitations to work in Holland and Germany. However, Linnaeus chose to return to Sweden. In 1739 he opened a medical practice in Stockholm and continued to study natural history. In 1741 he was appointed professor of medicine at Uppsala University, and in 1742 he also became professor of botany there. In subsequent years, he mainly taught and wrote scientific works, but at the same time he made several scientific expeditions to little-studied areas of Sweden and published a report on each of them. Linnaeus's enthusiasm, his fame, and most importantly his ability to infect others with the desire to find something new attracted many followers to him. He collected a huge herbarium and a collection of plants. Collectors from all over the world sent him specimens of unknown forms of life, and he described their findings in his books.
In 1745 Linnaeus published the Flora of Sweden (Flora Suecica), in 1746 - the Fauna of Sweden (Fauna Suecica), in 1748 - the Uppsala Garden (Hortus Upsaliensis). New editions of The System of Nature continue to be published in Sweden and abroad. Some of them, especially the sixth (1748), tenth (1758) and twelfth (1766), significantly supplemented the previous ones. The famous 10th and 12th editions became encyclopedic multi-volume works, not only representing an attempt to classify natural objects, but also providing brief descriptions, i.e. distinctive features of all species of animals, plants and minerals known at that time. The article on each species was supplemented with information about its geographical distribution, habitat, behavior and varieties. The 12th edition was the most complete, but the 10th edition acquired the greatest importance. It was from the moment of its publication that the priority of modern zoological nomenclature was established, because it was in this book that Linnaeus first gave double (binary, or binomial) names to all animal species known to him. In 1753 he completed his great work Species plantarum; it contained descriptions and binary names of all plant species, which determined modern botanical nomenclature. In his book Philosophia botanica, published in 1751, Linnaeus aphoristically outlined the principles that guided his study of plants. The German writer, thinker and naturalist Goethe admitted: “Besides Shakespeare and Spinoza, Linnaeus had the strongest influence on me.”
The meaning of Linnaeus and the binary system of biological nomenclature. Linnaeus is the author of more than 180 books and numerous articles, mainly on natural history and medicine. For his contemporaries, lists, classifications and descriptions of plants and animals known at that time were of greatest importance. He systematized the scattered and often contradictory data of earlier authors and himself described a large number of new species. His publications stimulated further research because they enabled scientists to clearly distinguish the known from the unknown.
Modern naturalists see Linnaeus primarily as the founder of the binary system of scientific nomenclature, recognized today throughout the world. The binary system assumes that each species of plants and animals has a single scientific name (binomen) that belongs only to it, consisting of only two words (Latin or Latinized). The first of these is the generic name, which is common to a whole group of species close to each other that make up one biological genus. The second, a species epithet, is an adjective or noun (in the genitive case or in the application function) that refers to only one species of a given genus. Thus, the lion and tiger, included in the genus “cat” (Felis), are called Felis leo and Felis tigris, respectively, and the wolf from the genus dog (Canis) is called Canis lupus. The simplicity and clarity of such a system, which simultaneously determines the family relationships and species uniqueness of organisms, together with the authority of Linnaeus himself, a recognized expert in identifying living forms, led to the universal acceptance of the binary names he proposed. To be fair, it should be recognized that they have been used before by some other authors, but not systematically. Although Linnaeus included many of them in his works, the species names in his Species of Plants (1753) and System of Nature (1758) are considered precisely “Linnaean”, since in these books the binary system first found its consistent embodiment.
It is curious that Linnaeus himself did not attach much importance to the binary system. He emphasized the polynomial, i.e. a verbose name-description, and the corresponding binomen he himself considered to be a simple name (nomen trivialis), which had no scientific meaning and only made it easier to remember the species.
The Linnaean classification system subsequently underwent a radical revision, but its basic principles remained. His ideas about the taxonomic relationships of organisms are far from modern, since they are based on very limited factual data and outdated philosophical concepts. He proposed his classification long before the advent of Darwin's theory of evolution, which established that biological systematics should reflect the sequential origin of various forms of living things from common ancestors. Comparative anatomy and morphology in the 18th century. were just emerging, paleontology as a science did not exist, no one thought about genetics. However, Linnaeus's classification of the facts accumulated by his time became the foundation on which the edifice of modern biology grew.
Materials from the encyclopedia "The World Around Us" were used
Literature:
Linnaeus K. System of nature. Animal Kingdom, parts 1–2. St. Petersburg, 1804–1805
Bobrov E.G. Carl Linnaeus, 1707–1778. L., 1970
Linnaeus K. Philosophy of Botany. M., 1989
early years
Carl Linnaeus was born on May 23, 1707 in southern Sweden - in the village of Roshult, Småland province. His father is Nils Ingemarsson Linnaeus (Swedish: Nicolaus (Nils) Ingemarsson Linnaeus, 1674-1748), a village priest; mother - Christina Linnaea (Brodersonia) (Swedish: Christina Linnaea (Brodersonia), 1688-1733), daughter of a village priest.
In 1709, the family moved to Stenbrohult, located a couple of kilometers from Rosshult. There, Nils Linnaeus planted a small garden near his house, which he lovingly tended. From early childhood, Karl also showed an interest in plants.
In 1716-1727, Carl Linnaeus studied in the city of Växjö: first at the lower grammar school (1716-1724), then at the gymnasium (1724-1727). Since Växjö was about fifty kilometers from Stenbrohult, Karl was only at home during the holidays. His parents wanted him to study to be a pastor and in the future, as the eldest son, to take his father’s place, but Karl studied very poorly, especially in the basic subjects of theology and ancient languages. He was only interested in botany and mathematics; Often he even skipped classes, going into nature to study plants instead of school.
Dr. Johan Rothman (1684-1763), a district doctor who taught logic and medicine at Linnaeus’s school, persuaded Niels Linnaeus to send his son to study as a doctor and began to study medicine, physiology and botany with Karl individually.
Study in Lund and Uppsala
In 1727, Linnaeus passed the exams and was enrolled at Lund University - Lund (Swedish: Lund) was the closest city to Växjö that had an institution of higher education. Linnaeus was most interested in the lectures of Professor Kilian Stobeus (1690-1742), with the help of which Karl largely put in order the information that he had gleaned from books and his own observations.
In August 1728, Linnaeus, on the advice of Johan Rothmann, transferred to Uppsala University, where there were more opportunities to study medicine. The level of teaching at both universities was not very high, and most of the time Linnaeus was engaged in self-education.
In Uppsala, Linnaeus met his peer, student Peter Artedi (1705-1735), together with whom they began work on a critical revision of the natural history classifications that existed at that time. Linnaeus was primarily concerned with plants in general, Artedi with fish and umbrella plants.
In 1729, Linnaeus met Olof Celsius (sv) (1670-1756), a professor of theology who was a keen botanist. This meeting turned out to be very important for Linnaeus: he soon settled in the house of Celsus and gained access to his extensive library. In the same year, Linnaeus wrote a short work “Introduction to the Sexual Life of Plants” (lat. Praeludia sponsaliorum plantarum), which outlined the main ideas of his future classification of plants based on sexual characteristics. This work aroused great interest in academic circles in Uppsala.
From 1730, Linnaeus began teaching as a demonstrator in the botanical garden of the university under the supervision of Professor Olof Rudbeck Jr. Linnaeus's lectures were a great success. In the same year, Linnaeus moved into the house of Olof Rudbeck Jr.
On May 12, 1732, Linnaeus set off on a trip to Lapland, from where he returned only in the fall, on October 10, with collections and records. In 1732, Florula lapponica (“Brief Flora of Lapland”) was published, in which the so-called sexual system of plants of 24 classes, based on the structure of stamens and pistils, appears for the first time in print. During this period, universities in Sweden did not issue doctoral degrees in medicine, and Linnaeus, without a doctoral diploma, could not continue teaching in Uppsala.
In 1733, Linnaeus was actively involved in mineralogy and wrote a textbook on this topic. At Christmas 1733, he moved to Falun, where he began teaching assay art and mineralogy.
In 1734, Linnaeus made a botanical journey to the province of Dalarna.
Dutch period
In the spring of 1735, Linnaeus went to Holland for his doctorate, accompanying one of his students. Before arriving in Holland, Linnaeus visited Hamburg. On June 23, he received his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Harderwijk for his thesis on the causes of intermittent fever (malaria). From Harderwijk, Linnaeus headed to Leiden, where he published a small work, Systema naturae, which opened the way for him to the circle of learned doctors, naturalists and collectors in Holland, who revolved around the professor of Leiden University, Hermann Boerhaave, who enjoyed European fame.
In August 1735, Linnaeus, with the patronage of friends, received the position of caretaker of the collections and botanical garden of the burgomaster of Amsterdam and director of the Dutch East India Company, George Clifford (en) (1685-1760). The garden was located near the city of Haarlem; it contained many exotic plants from all over the world - and Linnaeus was engaged in their description and classification.
On September 27, 1735, Linnaeus's close friend Peter Artedi drowned in a canal in Amsterdam, where he was working organizing the collections of the traveler, zoologist, and pharmacist Albert Seb (1665-1736). Linnaeus later published Artedi's work on ichthyology and used his proposals for the classification of fish and umbrellas in his works.
In the summer of 1736, Linnaeus lived in England for several months, where he met with the famous botanists of the time, Hans Sloane (1660-1753) and Johan Jakob Dillenius (de) (1687-1747).
The three years Linnaeus spent in Holland are one of the most productive periods of his scientific biography. During this time, his main works were published: in addition to the first edition of Systema naturae (System of Nature), Linnaeus managed to publish Bibliotheca Botanica (a systematic catalog of literature on botany), Fundamenta Botanica (a collection of aphorisms on the principles of description and classification of plants), Musa Cliffordiana (Description of a banana, growing in Clifford's garden, in which Linnaeus publishes one of the first sketches of the natural plant system), Hortus Cliffordianus (description of Clifford's garden), Flora Lapponica (Lapland flora), Genera plantarum (characteristics of plant genera), Classes plantarum (comparison of all known at that time plant systems with the system of Linnaeus himself and the first publication of Linnaeus’s natural plant system in full), Critica botanica (a set of rules for the formation of names of plant genera). Some of these books came with wonderful illustrations by the artist George Ehret (1708-1770).
In 1738, Linnaeus went back to Sweden, visiting Paris along the way, where he met the botanists the Jussieux brothers.
Linnaeus family
In 1734, at Christmas, Linnaeus met his future wife: her name was Sara Elisabeth (Elisabeth, Lisa) Moraea (Mor?a), 1716-1806), she was the daughter of Johan Hansson Moreus (Swedish. Johan Hansson Moraeus (Mor?us), 1672-1742), city physician in Falun. Just two weeks after they met, Linnaeus proposed to her. In the spring of 1735, shortly before leaving for Europe, Linnaeus and Sarah became engaged (without a formal ceremony). Linnaeus partially received money for the trip from his future father-in-law.
In 1738, after returning from Europe, Linnaeus and Sarah officially became engaged, and in September 1739, a wedding took place in the Moreus family farm.
Their first child (later known as Carl Linnaeus Jr.) was born in 1741. They had a total of seven children (two boys and five girls), of whom two (a boy and a girl) died in infancy.
The genus of beautifully flowering South African perennials from the Iris family (Iridaceae) was named Moraea (Morea) by Linnaeus - in honor of his wife and her father.
Returning to his homeland, Linnaeus opened a medical practice in Stockholm (1738). Having cured several ladies-in-waiting's coughs with a decoction of fresh yarrow leaves, he soon became a court physician and one of the most fashionable doctors in the capital. It is known that in his medical work, Linnaeus actively used strawberries, both to treat gout and to cleanse the blood, improve complexion, and reduce weight.
In addition to his medical activities, Linnaeus taught in Stockholm at a mining school.
In 1739, Linnaeus took part in the formation of the Royal Academy of Sciences (which in the early years of its existence was a private society) and became its first chairman.
In October 1741, Linnaeus took up the post of professor of medicine at Uppsala University and moved to the professor's house, located in the University Botanical Garden (now the Linnaeus Garden). The position of professor allowed him to concentrate on writing books and dissertations on natural history. Linnaeus worked at Uppsala University until the end of his life.
On behalf of the Swedish Parliament, Linnaeus participated in scientific expeditions - in 1741 to Öland and Gotland, the Swedish islands in the Baltic Sea, in 1746 - to the province of Västergötland (sv) (Western Sweden), and in 1749 - to the province of Skåne (Southern Sweden ).
In 1750, Carl Linnaeus was appointed rector of Uppsala University.
The most significant publications of the 1750s:
- Philosophia botanica ("Philosophy of Botany", 1751) is a botany textbook that was translated into many European languages and remained a model for other textbooks until the early 19th century.
- Species plantarum ("Species of plants"). The date of publication of the work - May 1, 1753 - is taken as the starting point of botanical nomenclature.
- 10th edition of Systema naturae ("System of Nature"). The publication date of this edition - January 1, 1758 - is taken as the starting point of zoological nomenclature.
- Amoenitates academicae (“Academic leisure”, 1751-1790). A collection of dissertations written by Linnaeus for his students and partly by the students themselves.
In 1758, Linnaeus acquired the farm Hammarby (Swedish: Hammarby) about ten kilometers southeast of Uppsala (now Linnaeus Hammarby). The country house in Hammarby became his summer estate.
In 1757 Linnaeus was presented to the nobility, which, after several years of consideration of the matter, was awarded to him in 1761. Linnaeus then changed his name to the French style - Carl von Linne - and came up with a coat of arms with an image of an egg and symbols of the three kingdoms of nature.
In 1774, Linnaeus suffered his first stroke (cerebral hemorrhage), as a result of which he was partially paralyzed. In the winter of 1776-1777 there was a second blow. On December 30, 1777, Linnaeus became significantly worse, and on January 10, 1778, he died at his home in Uppsala.
As one of the prominent citizens of Uppsala, Linnaeus was buried in Uppsala Cathedral.
Linnaeus Collection
Carl Linnaeus left a huge collection, which included two herbariums, a collection of shells, a collection of insects and a collection of minerals, as well as a large library. “This is the greatest collection the world has ever seen,” he wrote to his wife in a letter that he bequeathed to be made public after his death.
After much family disagreement and contrary to the instructions of Carl Linnaeus, the entire collection went to his son, Carl von Linne d.y., 1741-1783, who moved it from the Hammarby Museum to his home in Uppsala and worked extremely hard to preserve it. items included in it (the herbariums and the collection of insects had already suffered from pests and dampness by that time). The English naturalist Sir Joseph Banks (English Joseph Banks, 1743-1820) offered him to sell the collection, but he refused.
But soon after the sudden death of Carl Linnaeus the Younger from a stroke at the end of 1783, his mother (the widow of Carl Linnaeus) wrote to Banks that she was ready to sell him the collection. He did not buy it himself, but convinced the young English naturalist James Edward Smith (1759-1828) to do so. Potential buyers were also Carl Linnaeus's student Baron Clas Alstromer (Swedish Clas Alstromer, 1736-1894), Russian Empress Catherine the Great, English botanist John Sibthorp (English John Sibthorp, 1758-1796) and others, but Smith turned out to be more prompt: he quickly approved the inventory sent to him, he approved the deal. Scientists and students at Uppsala University demanded that the authorities do everything to leave Linnaeus’s legacy in their homeland, but government officials responded that they could not resolve this issue without the intervention of the king, and King Gustav III was in Italy at that time...
In September 1784, the collection left Stockholm on an English brig and was soon safely delivered to England. The legend according to which the Swedes sent a warship to intercept an English brig carrying out the Linnaeus collection has no scientific basis, although it is depicted in an engraving from R. Thornton’s book “A New Illustration of the Linnaeus System.”
The collection received by Smith included 19 thousand herbarium sheets, more than three thousand insect specimens, more than one and a half thousand shells, over seven hundred coral specimens, two and a half thousand mineral specimens; the library consisted of two and a half thousand books, over three thousand letters, as well as manuscripts of Carl Linnaeus, his son and other scientists.
In 1788, Smith founded the Linnean Society of London in London, whose purpose was declared to be “the development of science in all its manifestations,” including the preservation and development of Linnaeus’s teachings. Today this society is one of the most authoritative scientific centers, especially in the field of biological systematics. A significant part of the Linnaeus collection is still stored in a special repository of the society (and is available for work by researchers).
Contribution to science
Linnaeus divided the natural world into three kingdoms: mineral, plant and animal, using four levels (ranks): classes, orders, genera and species.
The method introduced by Linnaeus of forming a scientific name for each species is still used today (the previously used long names, consisting of a large number of words, gave a description of the species, but were not strictly formalized). The use of a two-word Latin name - the genus name, then the specific name - made it possible to separate nomenclature from taxonomy. This species naming convention is called “binomial nomenclature.”
Carl Linnaeus - Swedish naturalist, naturalist, botanist, doctor, founder of modern biological taxonomy, creator of the system of flora and fauna, first president of the Swedish Academy of Sciences (since 1739), foreign honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1754).
Linnaeus was the first to consistently apply binary nomenclature and built the most successful artificial classification of plants and animals, describing about 1,500 plant species. Karl advocated the constancy of species and creationism. Author of “System of Nature” (1735), “Philosophy of Botany” (1751), etc.
Carl Linnaeus was born on May 23, 1707 in Rossult. The boy was the first-born in the family of a rural pastor and flower grower Nils Linneus. His father replaced his surname Ingemarson with the Latinized surname “Linneus” after the giant linden tree (in Swedish Lind) that grew near the family home. Having moved from Rosshult to neighboring Stenbrohult (province of Småland in Southern Sweden), Nils planted a beautiful garden, about which Linnaeus said: “this garden inflamed my mind with an unquenchable love for plants.”
Karl's passion for plants distracted him from his homework. The parents hoped that studying in the neighboring town of Växjö would cool down the ardent passion of the future scientist. However, in elementary school (from 1716), and then in the gymnasium (from 1724), the boy studied poorly. He neglected theology and was considered the worst student in ancient languages.
Only the need to read Pliny's Natural History and the works of modern botanists forced him to study Latin, the universal language of science of that time. Dr. Rothman introduced Karl to these works. Encouraging the gifted young man's interest in botany, he prepared him for university.
In August 1727, twenty-year-old Carl Linnaeus became a student at Lund University. Acquaintance with the herbarium collections of the natural cabinet of Professor Stobeus prompted Linnaeus to conduct a detailed study of the flora of the surrounding area of Lund, and by December 1728 he compiled a catalog of rare plants “Catalogus Plantarum Rariorum Scaniae et Smolandiae”.
In the same year, C. Linnaeus continued his study of medicine at Uppsala University, where friendly communication with student Peter Artedi (later a famous ichthyologist) brightened up the dryness of the course of lectures on natural history. Joint excursions with the theologian professor O. Celsius, who helped the financially poor Linnaeus, and studies in his library expanded Linnaeus’s botanical horizons, and he was indebted to the benevolent professor O. Rudbeck Jr. not only for the beginning of his teaching career, but also for the idea of traveling to Lapland (May -September 1732).
The purpose of this expedition was to study all three kingdoms of nature - minerals, plants and animals - the vast and little-studied region of Fennoscandia, as well as the life and customs of the Laplanders (Sami). The results of the four-month journey were first summarized by Linnaeus in a small work in 1732; the complete Flora lapponica, one of Linnaeus's most famous works, was published in 1737.
In 1734, C. Linnaeus traveled to the Swedish province of Dalecarlia at the expense of the governor of this province, and later, having settled in Falun, he was engaged in mineralogy and assay business. Here he first began practicing medicine, and also found himself a bride. Linnaeus's engagement to the daughter of the doctor Moreus took place on the eve of the groom's departure to Holland, where Linnaeus was going as a candidate for a doctorate in medicine in order to be able to support his family (a requirement of his future father-in-law).
Having successfully defended his dissertation on intermittent fever (fever) at the university in Gardewijk on June 24, 1735, K. Linnaeus plunged into the study of the richest natural science rooms in Amsterdam. Then he went to Leiden, where he published one of his most important works - “Systema naturae” (“System of Nature”, 1735). It was a summary of the kingdoms of minerals, plants and animals, presented in tables on only 14 pages, albeit in a sheet format. Linnaeus classified plants into 24 classes, basing the classification on the number, size and location of stamens and pistils.
The new system turned out to be practical and allowed even amateurs to identify plants, especially since Linnaeus streamlined the terms of descriptive morphology and introduced a binary (binomial) nomenclature to designate species, which simplified the search and identification of both plants and animals.
Later, Karl supplemented his work, and the last lifetime (12th) edition consisted of 4 books and 2335 pages. Linnaeus himself recognized himself as the chosen one, called upon to interpret the Creator's plan, but only the recognition of the famous Dutch physician and naturalist Hermann Boerhaave opened the path to fame for him.
After Leiden, Carl Linnaeus lived in Amsterdam with the director of the Botanical Garden, studying plants and creating scientific works. Soon, on the recommendation of Boerhaave, he received a position as a family physician and head of the botanical garden with the director of the East India Company and burgomaster of Amsterdam G. Clifford. During two years (1736-1737) spent in Hartekamp (near Haarlem), where the rich man and plant lover Clifford created an extensive collection of plants from all over the world, Linnaeus published a number of works that brought him European fame and unquestioned authority among botanists.
In a small book “Fundamente Botanicc” (“Fundamentals of Botany”), composed of 365 aphorisms (according to the number of days in the year), Linnaeus outlined the principles and ideas that guided him in his work as a systematic botanist.
In the famous aphorism “we count as many species as the different forms that were first created,” he expressed his belief in the constancy of the number and immutability of species since their creation (later he allowed the emergence of new species as a result of crossings between already existing species). Here is an interesting classification of botanists themselves.
The works “Genera plantarun” (“Genera of Plants”) and “Critica Botanica” are devoted to the establishment and description of genera (994) and problems of botanical nomenclature, and “Bibliotheca Botanica” is devoted to botanical bibliography. Carl Linnaeus's systematic description of the Clifford botanical garden - "Hortus Сliffortianus" (1737) for a long time became a model for such works. In addition, Linnaeus published the “Ichthyology” of his untimely deceased friend Artedi, preserving for science the work of one of the founders of ichthyology.
Returning to his homeland in the spring of 1738, Linnaeus married and settled in Stockholm, practicing medicine, teaching and science. In 1739 he became one of the founders of the Royal Academy of Sciences and its first president, receiving the title of “royal botanist”.
In May 1741, Carl Linnaeus traveled to Gotland and the island of Oland, and in October of the same year, his professorship at Uppsala University began with a lecture “On the Necessity of Traveling in the Fatherland.” Many people sought to study botany and medicine in Uppsala. The number of university students tripled, and in the summer it increased many times thanks to the famous excursions, which ended with a solemn procession and a loud cry of “Vivat Linnaeus!” by all its participants.
Since 1742, the teacher restored the university Botanical Garden, which was almost destroyed by fire, placing in it a particularly vibrant collection of Siberian plants. The rarities sent from all continents by his traveling students were also grown here.
In 1751, Philosophia Botanica (Philosophy of Botany) was published, and in 1753, probably the most significant and important work for botany by Carl Linnaeus, Species plantarum (Species of Plants).
Surrounded by admiration, showered with honors, elected an honorary member of many learned societies and Academies, including St. Petersburg (1754), elevated to the nobility in 1757, Linnaeus, in his declining years acquired the small estate of Hammarby, where he spent time peacefully tending to his own garden and collections . The scientist died in Uppsala in the seventy-first year.
In 1783, after the death of Linnaeus's son, Karl, his widow sold the herbarium, collections, manuscripts and library of the scientist for 1000 guineas to England. In 1788, the Linnean Society was established in London, and its first president, J. Smith, became the main custodian of the collections. Designed to become a center for the study of Linnaeus's scientific heritage, it continues to fulfill this role today.
Thanks to Carl Linnaeus, plant science became one of the most popular in the second half of the 18th century. He himself was recognized as the “chief of botanists,” although many contemporaries condemned the artificiality of the Linnean system. His merit consisted in streamlining the almost chaotic diversity of forms of living organisms into a clear and observable system. He described more than 10,000 species of plants and 4,400 species of animals (including Homo sapiens). Linnaeus' binomial nomenclature remains the basis of modern taxonomy.
The Linnian names of plants in Species plantarum (Species of Plants, 1753) and animals in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae (1758) are legal, and both dates are officially recognized as the beginning of modern botanical and zoological nomenclature. The Linnaean principle ensured the universality and continuity of the scientific names of plants and animals and ensured the flowering of taxonomy. The scientist's passion for taxonomy and classification was not limited to plants - he also classified minerals, soils, diseases, and human races. He wrote a number of medical works. Unlike scientific works written in Latin, Carl Linnaeus wrote his travel notes in his native language. They are considered an example of this genre in Swedish prose.
Linnaeus Karl (1707-1778), Swedish naturalist who created a system for classifying flora and fauna.
Born on May 23, 1707 in the city of Rosshuld (Sweden) in the family of a pastor. From his father, young Karl inherited a passion for botany.
Having studied natural and medical sciences at Lund (1727) and Uppsala (since 1728) universities, Linnaeus in 1732 traveled through Lapland (a natural area in northern Sweden, Norway, Finland and the western Kola Peninsula). The result was the work “Flora of Lapland” (1732; complete edition 1737).
In 1735, the scientist moved to the city of Hartekamp (Netherlands), where he received the position of head of the botanical garden; defended his doctoral dissertation on the topic “New hypothesis of intermittent fevers.”
From 1738 he practiced medicine in Stockholm; in 1739 he headed the naval hospital and won the right to autopsy corpses to determine the cause of death. He participated in the creation of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and became its first president (1739).
From 1741 he headed the department at Uppsala University, where he taught medicine and natural science.
Linnaeus's most significant work is the System of Nature. The book was first published in 1735 and went through 12 editions during the author’s lifetime. It was in this work that Linnaeus applied and introduced the so-called binary nomenclature, according to which each species is designated by two Latin names - generic and specific.
The scientist defined the concept of species using both morphological (similarity within the offspring of the same family) and physiological (presence of fertile offspring) criteria.
He established a clear gradation of systematic categories: class, order, genus, species, variation. Linnaeus based his classification of plants on the number, size and location of the stamens and pistils of a flower, as well as the sign that the plant is mono-, bi- or polyecious. He believed that the reproductive organs are the most essential and permanent parts of the body in plants. Based on this principle, the scientist divided all plants into 24 classes.
Linnaeus discovered and described about 1,500 plant species. The classification of the animal world he proposed subsequently underwent significant changes thanks to new discoveries in the field of biology, but was revolutionary for its time. Its distinctive feature is that man is included in the system of the animal kingdom and belongs to the class of mammals, the order of primates. The dual nomenclature system proposed by Linnaeus is still in use today.
