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Carolus Linnaeus
Swedish botanist
Alternate titles: Carl Linnaeus, Carl von Linné

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Carolus Linnaeus

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Born:
May 23, 1707 •
Sweden
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Died:
January 10, 1778 (aged 70) •
toc Uppsala •
Sweden

Notable Works:
“Genera
Plantarum” •
“Species Plantarum” •
“Systema Naturae”

Subjects Of Study:
plant •
Linnaean
system •
nomenclature •
taxonomy

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Carolus Linnaeus, also called Carl Linnaeus, Swedish Carl von Linné, (born May
23, 1707, Råshult, Småland, Sweden—died January 10, 1778, Uppsala), Swedish naturalist
and explorer who was the first to frame principles for defining natural genera and species
of organisms and to create a uniform system for naming them (binomial nomenclature).

Early life and travels

Linnaeus was the son of a curate and grew up in Småland, a poor region in southern
Sweden. His early interest in botany was channeled by a teacher at Växjö gymnasium, who
acquainted him with the plant system of French botanist and physician Joseph Pitton de
Tournefort, an essay on plant sexuality by French botanist Sébastian Vaillant, and the
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physiological writings of Dutch physician and professor of medicine Herman Boerhaave.

In 1727 Linnaeus began his studies in medicine at Lund University, but he transferred to
Uppsala University in 1728. Because of his financial situation, he could only visit a few
lectures; however, the university professor Olof Celsius provided Linnaeus access to his
library. From 1730 to 1732 he was able to subsidize himself by teaching botany in the
university garden of Uppsala.

At this early stage, Linnaeus laid the groundwork for much of his later work in a series of
manuscripts. Their publication, however, had to await more-fortuitous circumstances. In
1732 the Uppsala Academy of Sciences sent Linnaeus on a research expedition to Lapland.
After his return in the autumn of that year, he gave private lectures in botany and mineral
assaying. That Christmas he used some of his earnings to pay a visit to Claes Sohlberg, his
friend and fellow student, in Falun, the capital of the copper-mining region of Dalarna, in
central Sweden. There he became acquainted with the governor, who financed a second
trip to the region in the summer of 1734. At the time, it was necessary for Swedish medical
students to complete their doctoral degrees abroad in order to open a successful medical
practice in their homeland. In an agreement with Sohlberg’s father, who was the royal
inspector of the Falun copper mine and impressed with Linnaeus’s botanical and
mineralogical abilities, Linnaeus received an annual stipend to offset medical school
expenses in the Netherlands. In return, Linnaeus promised to take young Sohlberg with
him on the trip and serve as his academic mentor. Before they embarked on their journey
in the spring of 1735, Linnaeus became engaged to Sara Elisabeth—the daughter of Johan
Moraeus, a well-to-do physician in Falun. It was agreed that their marriage should take
place after Linnaeus returned from the Netherlands in three years’ time.

The “sexual system” of classification

A few days after arriving in the Dutch town of Harderwijk in May 1735, Linnaeus
completed his examinations and received his medical degree following the submission of a
thesis he had prepared in advance on the topic of intermittent fevers. Linnaeus and
Sohlberg then journeyed to Leiden, where Linnaeus sought patronage for the publication
of his numerous manuscripts. He was immediately successful, and his Systema Naturae
(“The System of Nature”) was published only a few months later with financial support
from Jan Frederik Gronovius, senator of Leiden, and Isaac Lawson, a Scottish physician.
This folio volume of only 11 pages presented a hierarchical classification, or taxonomy, of
the three kingdoms of nature: stones, plants, and animals. Each kingdom was subdivided
into classes, orders, genera, species, and varieties. This hierarchy of taxonomic ranks
replaced traditional systems of biological classification that were based on mutually
exclusive divisions, or dichotomies. Linnaeus’s classification system has survived in
biology, though additional ranks, such as families, have been added to accommodate
growing numbers of species.
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example of Linnaean classification

Coyotes and gray wolves share a long evolutionary history and are closely related, because they belong to the
same domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, and genus. However, their scientific names indicate that
they belong to different species: Canis latrans (coyote) and Canis lupus (gray wolf).
Image: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

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In particular, it was the botanical section of Systema Naturae that built Linnaeus’s
scientific reputation. After reading essays on sexual reproduction in plants by Vaillant and
by German botanist Rudolph Jacob Camerarius, Linnaeus had become convinced of the
idea that all organisms reproduce sexually. As a result, he expected each plant to possess
male and female sexual organs (stamens and pistils), or “husbands and wives,” as he also
put it. On this basis, he designed a simple system of distinctive characteristics to classify
each plant. The number and position of the stamens, or husbands, determined the class to
which it belonged, whereas the number and position of pistils, or wives, determined the
order. This “sexual system,” as Linnaeus called it, became extremely popular, though
certainly not only because of its practicality but also because of its erotic connotations and
its allusions to contemporary gender relations. French political theorist Jean-Jacques
Rousseau used the system for his “Huit lettres élémentaires sur la botanique à Madame
Delessert” (1772; “Eight Letters on the Elements of Botany Addressed to Madame
Delessert”). English physician Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin, used
Linnaeus’s sexual system for his poem “The Botanic Garden” (1789), which caused an
uproar among contemporaries for its explicit passages.

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