Linnaeus, Carolus

Linnaeus, Carolus( Carl von Linné) (1707–78)A Swedish naturalist remembered for his large contributions to plant classification and his introduction of the binomial system of nomenclature. Trained as a botanist and physician in Uppsala, he went to Holland to continue his studies. While there he published the Systema Naturae (1735), a classified list of plants, animals, and minerals. The list grew in later editions and the tenth edition (1758) is the starting-point of zoological nomenclature. In the first edition of his Genera Plantarum (1737) he gave more details of his artificial classification of plants, based largely on the number of stamens and pistils in a flower and the manner in which they occurred. The system was very popular, because it allowed students to catalogue and recognize vegetation quickly; its popularity caused some difficulties when it had to be replaced by natural classifications. In 1741 he was appointed to the chair of medicine at Uppsala, but exchanged it within a year for the chair of botany. He then began listing species, grouping them into genera, genera into classes, and classes into orders. In 1749 he introduced binomial classification, a system which used a Latin generic noun followed by a specific adjective. Until this time, polynomial plant names comprised concise Latin descriptions, which restricted the growth of classification. Ironically, it was largely this new system that allowed the development of ideas about the evolution of species, a concept to which Linnaeus was opposed. Linnaeus published the specific names in his most important botanical work, Species Plantarum (1753), still the official starting-point of current botanical nomenclature. Altogether he completed around 180 works and was considered to be an excellent tutor. After his death, his collections and library were sold in 1784 to Sir James Edward Smith, the first president of the Linnean Society of London (founded in 1788) and in 1828 the Society purchased the collection, which it still holds. See also International Code of Botanical Nomenclature and International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.