Linnaeus (or von Linné), Carl

(b. Södra Råshult, Småland, Sweden, 23 May 1707;d, Uppsala, Sweden, 10 January 1778),

botany, zoology, geology, medicine.

During his lifetime, Linnaeus exerted an influence in his fields—botany and natural history—that has had few parallels in the history of science. Driven by indomitable ambition and aided by an incredible capacity for work, he accomplished the tremendous task that he had set for himself in his youth: the establishment of new systems for the three kingdoms of nature to facilitate the description of all known animals, plants, and minerals.

His father, Nils Linnaeus, a country parson in the south Swedish province of Småland, settled in 1709 in Stenbrohult, where Linnaeus grew up. The father was a great lover of flowers and laid out a beautiful garden in the parsonage grounds. He also introduced his son to the mysteries of botany. In 1716 Linnaeus entered the Latin School in the nearby cathedral city of Växjö, and from that time natural history remained his favorite study. An average boy, he was set apart only by his delight in botanizing and learning about plants.

Of great importance for Linnaeus’ future development was an outstanding teacher during his last years at Växjö, Johan Roth man, who encouraged his aptitude for botany and taught him Tournefort’s system. In 1727 he entered the University of Lund to study medicine. Medical instruction was poor there, but during his stay Linnaeus undertook extensive botanical excursions in the surrounding area and met Kilian Stobaeus, one of the many patrons who helped him in his youth. A medical doctor and a learned polymath, Stobaeus placed his rich library and his collection of natural specimens at Linnaeus’ disposition.

In the fall of 1728 Linnaeus went on to the University of Uppsala, lured by its greater reputation. On the whole he must have been disappointed, for the medical faculty was not much better than at Lund. Although he came to rely mostly on his own, independently acquired abilities as a botanist and natural historian, the atmosphere of Uppsala was in many ways useful. The botanical garden, although somewhat neglected, contained rare foreign plants, and he found influential promoters: the elderly professor of medicine Olof Rudbeck the younger, formerly an outstanding botanist and zoologist, and the learned Olof Celsius, with whom Linnaeus studied the flora of the surrounding region.

Around 1730 Linnaeus matured as a researcher and began delineating the fundamental features of his botanical reform. In a series of manuscripts, unpublished at the time, he noted the results of his observations and thoughts. He had already found the tool with which to construct a new system of plant taxonomy—the new theory of plant sexuality. At this time Linnaeus’ sexual system first appeared, still incomplete, in a manuscript version of his Hortus uplandicus (1730).

Linnaeus barely supported himself during this period by substituting for Rudbeck in conducting demonstrations at the botanical garden and by giving private lessons. In the spring of 1732, sponsored by the Uppsala Society of Science, he made a trip to Lapland that lasted until the fall. His account of the journey (first published in English translation in 1811) gives vivid evidence of his joy in the unfamiliar world of the Scandinavian mountains, in which he studied the unknown alpine flora and Lapp Customs. Two years later (1734) he undertook another, more modest study trip in the Dalarna region of central Sweden. He constantly revised his manuscripts and widened his teaching activities with courses in mineralogy and assaying. In the spring of 1735 Linnaeus left Sweden—with a Lapp costume, a troll-drum, and unpublished manuscripts in his luggage— to obtain the M.D. in Holland. At the University of Harderwijk he defended a thesis on the causes of ague, received his degree, and went on to Leiden.

Linnaeus’ sojourn in Holland lasted until 1738. It was a period of uninterrupted success in approaching his goal of being acknowledged as Europe’s outstanding botanist. Learned and wealthy patrons continued to help him: Boerhaave, J. F. Gronovius in Leiden, and the botanist Jan Burman in Amsterdam fostered Linnaeus’ plans and helped to see his works through to publication. During a short visit to England in 1736 he met Sir Hans Sloane and J. J. Dillenius, Most of the time he stayed with George Clifford, a wealthy merchant who established an incomparable botanical garden at the Hartekamp, near Haarlem; as its superintendent Linnaeus could concentrate on his botanical work.

Linnaeus’ literary production during his three years in Holland is astonishing. Most of the works had been nearly finished in Sweden; but others, such as Hartus Clijforfiamts (1737), a beautiful folio on the plants in Clifford’s garden and greenhouse, were newly composed. Linnaeus’ key work, and the first to be published in Holland, was Systema naturae (1735). On seven folio leaves he presented in a schematic arrangement his new system for the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms; the plants were arranged according to the sexual system that this work first made known to the scientific world. In the small Fundamenta botanica (1736) Linnaeus put forward with dictatorial authority his theory for systematic botany, and in Bibliotheca botanica he listed the botanical literature in systematic fashion. Other works of this period are Flora lapponica (1737), in which he described his botanical collections from the Lapland journey; Crifka botanica (1737), with rules for botanical nomenclature; Classes plantation (1738), in which he reviewed the various plant systems going back to Cesalpino; and Genera plantarum (1737), which, next to Systema naturae, is his outstanding early work and contains short descriptions of all 935 plant genera known at the time.

Linnaeus then set out for Sweden via Paris, where he visited the brothers Jussieu, and by June 1738 he was back in his native country. His foreign triumphs had not gone unnoticed; but no academic position awaited him, and he was obliged to become a practicing physician in Stockholm. He married Sara Elisabeth Moraea, the daughter of a wealthy city physician. In 1739 he was appointed physician to the admiralty and was one of the moving powers in the founding of the Swedish Academy of Science in Stockholm, of which he became the first president and eventually the most outstanding member.

A new phase of Linnaeus’ life began in the spring of 1741. After a rather scandalous fight for tenure he was appointed professor of practical medicine at the University of Uppsala; in 1742, through a sort of job exchange, he took over the more suitable chair of botany, dietetics, and materia medica. For the rest of his life Linnaeus remained in Uppsala as professor of medicine, while his fame as premier botanist spread throughout the world.

One of his first tasks was to renovate the university’s neglected botanical garden, founded in 1655 by Rudbeck the elder. Remodeled in French style with formal parterres and an ornamental orangery, it was filled over the years with innumerable plants from Europe and distant parts of the world. Linnaeus spent the rest of his life in the professorial residence in a corner of the garden.

As a teacher and supervisor Linnaeus was incomparable. Students flocked to his lectures, which were characterized by humor and the presentation of unusual ideas, and which included the whole of botany and natural history. He liked dealing with what he called “the natural diet,” that is, man’s way of living under the pressure of civilization. In private seminars he gave deeper insights into his botanical thought His botanical excursions held near Uppsala were immensely popular; these herbationes were organized according to a fixed ritual: on the return home the participants marched in closed formation to the music of French horns and drums.

Linnaeus took an unselfish and devoted interest in his more mature students, supporting and encouraging them. He persuaded an imposing number of them to obtain the doctorate, but he usually wrote their theses himself (collected under the title Amoenitates academicae I-VII [1749 1769]; V1I1-X [1785-1790]).

From 1759 Linnaeus was assisted by his son Carl von Linné the younger, who had been appointed botanical demonstrator and who succeeded his father. Linnaeus occasionally worked for the royal court: he described the valuable natural history collections at Ulriksdal and at the castle of Drottningholm, and charmed the discerning queen, Lovisa Ulrika, by his unaffected manner. On the whole he had an unerring instinct for profitable social connections; he counted among his friends and admirers the country’s outstanding cultural leaders, including the president of the chancellery, Carl Gustaf Tessin,

Linnaeus was in contact with the world’s botanists and collectors of natural history specimens. He corresponded with them and received seeds for his garden and plants for his herbarium, which became very extensive. He became a member of innumerable foreign scientific societies (he was one of the eight foreign members of the Paris Academy in 1762) and received distinctions and honors in Sweden; in 1747 he was appointed court physician and in 1762 he was elevated to the nobility as von Linné. In later years he traveled every summer to Hammarby, his small estate outside Uppsala; there, free from academic chores, he devoted himself to botany or taught selected students.

Linnaeus’ research work during his mature years began with trips to various Swedish provinces. By order of the parliament, which wanted an inventory of all the natural resources of the country, during three summers in the 1740’s Linnaeus traveled through selected areas to describe them and to search for dyestuffs, minerals, clay, and other economically useful substances. His reports of these expeditions were published as Ölandska och gothländska resa (1745), Västgöta resa (1747), and Skånska resa (1751), all written in Swedish. Nothing escaped his attention on his travels on horseback—plants and insects, runic stones and other ancient remnants, farmers working in the fields and meadows, the changes in the weather. His prose style was simple and strong, sometimes rising to lyrical outbursts or spiced with effective similes.

But Linnaeus’ main mission was to complete his reform of botany. In the work produced during his stay in Holland he had established the principles, maintained more or less unchanged for the rest of his life, but they still had to be developed and put into practice. In 1751 he published Philosophies botanica, his most influential work but actually only an expanded version of Fundamenta botanica. In it Linnaeus dealt with the theory of botany, the laws and rules that the botanist must follow in order to describe and name the plants correctly and to combine them into higher systematic categories. At the same time he struggled with the enormous undertaking of cataloging all of the world’s plant and animal species and giving each its correct place in the system.

Linnaeus started modestly with his native land: Flora suecica containing 1,140 species, appeared in 1745 and Fauna suecica followed a year later. The remaining inventory of the world’s flora was arduous; surrounded by herbarium sheets and folios, Linnaeus occasionally felt unable to continue. Yet before long he completed the monumental Species plantarum (1753), the work he valued the most. In its two volumes he described in brief Latin diagnoses about 8,000 plant species from throughout the world. He also continued to update his Systerma naturae, which, as the bible of natural history, was to present the current state of knowledge and which he periodically expanded and revised. The definitive tenth edition (1758-1759), which included only animal and plant species, was a two-volume work of 1,384 pages.

Linnaeus had to pay the price his ambitions demanded. After suffering a fit of apoplexy in the spring of 1774 that forced him to retire from teaching, his mind became increasingly clouded; another stroke followed in the fall of 1776, and he died early in 1778.

A born taxonomist and systematist, Linnaeus had a deep-rooted, almost compulsive need for clarity and order; everything that passed through his hands he cataloged and sorted into groups and subgroups. This characteristic typifies all of his writings, including his private correspondence. His view of the universe as a gigantic nature collection that God had given him to describe and to fit into a framework was applied first to his reform of botany. There was at that time an urgent need for a simple and easy-to-grasp system for the plant kingdom. A stream of previously unknown plants was reaching Europe, and botanists felt chaos threatening. Since the time of Cesalpino many botanists had tried to create a useful system; and toward the eighteenth century some of these systems had begun to win considerable support, especially those of John Ray and Tournefort, based upon the appearance of the corolla. But none was sufficiently practical, and the various systems were reciprocally competitive, thus increasing the confusion. Only Linnaeus’ system, based on sexuality, had the requisite of being generally adoptable.

Around 1720 the sexuality of plants was still being disputed by many botanists. Linnaeus had already learned about it from his teacher Roth man at the Växjö Gymnasium, following the publication of Sébastien Vaillant’s Sermo de structura florum (1717). As a student at Uppsala he had pursued the subject through his own investigations and soon was convinced of its truth. In the small Praeludia sponsaliorum plantarum (1730), written in Swedish, he announced that the stamens and pistils were the sexual organs of plants. At the same time he began to investigate whether the stamens and pistils could be used to construct a new botanical system. After a short period of doubt he was sure that they could, and in Systema naturae he presented the sexual system in its definitive form. The various plants are grouped into twenty-four classes according to the number of stamens and their relative order; each class is then divided into certain orders, mostly according to the number of pistils. The practical applicability of the sexual system made botany an easy and pleasant science; after one look at the organs of fertilization, any plant could quickly be placed in the proper class and order. To be sure, the system was attacked: in Germany by J. G. Sieges-beck and Heister, in Switzerland by Haller, and in France, where Tournefort’s system had long been generally accepted. But acceptance of the sexual system could not be halted; it gained footing almost everywhere, especially in England, beginning in the 1760’s.

Linnaeus was aware that the sexual system was an artificial structure. It was founded with rigid consistency upon a single principle of division and therefore represented the natural affinities only partially. Linnaeus tried throughout his life to replace the sexual system with a methodus naturalis, a botanical system that would express the “natural” relations. In Classes plantarum (1738) he described sixty-five plant orders that he considered natural, and he returned to the problem in private lectures toward the end of his life—but he never succeeded in solving it. A natural plant system presented theoretical difficulties that he was unable to overcome; in practice he seems to have depended on an intuitive knowledge of the general similarity (facies) of plants. Therefore Linnaeus and his pupils continued to use the sexual system, and it remained for the French (Adanson, A. L. de Jussieu) to lay the foundation of a natural botanical system in the modern sense of the word.

Linnaeus’ other achievements as the reorganizer of botany were as fundamental as the sexual system. He made a deep study of the principles of taxonomy and with masterly clarity worked out fixed rules for the differentiation of the lowest systematic categories-genera and species—both of which were, according to him, “natural.” Although Tournefort had already delineated the genus with great precision, it remained for Linnaeus, inspired by Ray, to be the first to work with species as a clearly defined concept The species were the basic units of botany, and for a long time he considered them to be fixed and unchangeable: “We can count as many species now as were created at the beginning.” He united closely related species in genera according to the appearance of their sexual organs.

Linnaeus dictated with inexorable logic in Philosophia botanica how botanists should proceed in practice. Every species had to be differentiated from all other species within the genus through a Latin differentia specifica, that is, a short diagnosis (twelve words at most) including the characteristic scientific name or nomen specificum. Furthermore, there had to be a longer, complete description of the whole plant. Linnaeus himself laid down the morphological terms that every taxonomist should use for each part of the plant, in order to avoid confusion.

Latin species names notwithstanding, the precision ordered by Linnaeus was nevertheless found to be unmanageable, and he therefore took a decisive step—the introduction of binomial nomenclature. Heralded in his bibliographical writings, it is effectively used for the first time in his dissertation on the plants eaten by animals, “Pan suecicus” (1749), and was subsequently applied in Species plantarum (1753). The binomial nomenclature implied that every plant species would be provided with only two names: one for the genus and one for the species. Linnaeus was delighted by the idea; it “was like putting the clapper in the bell.” Yet at the beginning he did not realize its full import. He considered the new species names only as handy labels, calling them “trivial names”; they could never replace the scientific “specific” names. Only gradually did he understand the practical advantages offered by the new nomenclature, and he then decreed that the “trivial name”; should be unchangeable. Since then his own Species plantarum has been the solid basis for botanical nomenclature.

Linnaeus’ botanical ideas changed over the years on an important point: he was forced to relinquish confidence in the constancy of the number of species. In Peloria (1744) he described a monstrous form of Linaria vulgaris that he wrongly interpreted as a hybrid between Linaria and a completely different plant. He thereafter held that new plant species could develop through hybridization (see Plantae hybridae [1751]) and reached the daring conclusion that within every genus only one species had originally been created, and that new species had developed in time through hybridization of the mother species with species of other genera. This concept was based upon a peculiar theory, traceable to Cesalpino, concerning the “marrow” and the “bark”: Every organism was supposed to consist of a marrow substance (medulla), which was inherited from the mother, and a bark substance (cortex), inherited from the father. All species within the same genera had a common marrow covered by bark substances deriving from different fathers. Around 1760 Linnaeus took the full step and asserted that for every natural plant order only one species had been created at the beginning; the various genera and species came into existence through cross-fertilization at different levels. The theory, although interesting as an attempt to approach a genetic kinship concept, has nothing to do with a theory of evolution in the modern, Darwinian sense of the word.

As a botanist Linnaeus was monumentally onesided. To order the plants in a system (divisio) and to name them (denominatio) was for him the real task of botany. He scorned anatomy and physiology and had little understanding of the then developing experimental biological investigations. To be sure, many acute observations in various areas of botany can be found in his works, especially in his academic dissertations. They deal in large part with ecology. Linnaeus investigated the dormancy of plants and the pollination process, undertaking some simple experiments in connection with the latter. With a sharp eye he distinguished different climatic and phytogeo-graphical regions and dealt successfully with problems of dispersion (wind dissemination of seeds and fruits, and so on).

Worked Out in Oeconomia naturae (1749) and Politia naturae (1760), Linnaeus’ views on the harmony or order in nature are of great interest. Here his perspective broadens; he sees organic nature as an eternal cyclic course of life and death in which every plant and animal species fulfills its destined task in the service of the whole. The domination of the insects prevents the plants from filling the world; the birds contain the insects within fixed limits, Intense competition prevails in nature, but precisely because of it a delicate balance is maintained that permits the work of creation to function. Both Erasmus and Charles Darwin later profitably adopted some of Linnaeus’ views on the hidden struggle in nature.

Linnaeus’ real mastery, in botanical systematics, was more problematic than generally realized. He was an empiricist and a brilliant observer whom nothing escaped. As an exact depicter of natural phenomena he scarcely had an equal. His herbarium comprised dried plants from all parts of the world, and he himself scrutinized more plant species than any of his predecessors. But he was ultimately forced by his special talents to abandon empiricism and instead stamped his work as taxonomist and systematist with a dogmatic and philosophical spirit. Order was paramount, and therefore he resorted to an artificial structure in his effort to place nature’s swarming multitudes in a simple, clear scheme. He violated nature, as in the sexual system he devised. Linnaeus’ scientific method implied that with the aid of certain rules, once and for all determined by himself, the three kingdoms of nature would be organized. He considered the Philosophia botanica to be a statute book spelling out the terminology and concepts to be used by botanists. Logic and definitions of concepts were the true tools of botany.

The fixed basis of Linnaeus’ system was derived from Aristotelian logic, and as a taxonomist he strictly applied its procedureper genus et differentiam. Significantly, he gratefully acknowledged his dependence on the neo-Aristotelian Andrea Cesalpino. As pointed out by Julius Sachs (1875), Linnaeus’ reformation of botany undoubtedly carried a Scholastic stamp, the problems that he wanted to solve with his systematic work being of a logical nature. The Scholastic feature is also noticeable in his conviction that the sexual organs are the real “essences” of plants and therefore must be made the basis for the classification system. He preferred to give his writing a Scholastic form and argued pro and contra like a medieval doctor. All of his work shows a tension between empirical and logical demands, and in situations of conflict the latter almost always wins.

Linnaeus’ classification of the animal and mineral kingdoms does not display the same rigorous consistency as his plant system. Presented and revised in the various editions of Systema naturae, his animal system was of considerable influence. It is somewhat forced and artificial; but Linnaeus, who here had Ray as principal forerunner, nevertheless sought a natural arrangement and often succeeded brilliantly. He did not use, as in botany, a single, universally valid basis for division but tried to divide the six animal classes he had distinguished by means of a specific organ: mammals according to teeth, birds according to bills, fishes according to fins, and insects according to wings. Added to these are the reptiles (Amphibia) and the “worms” (Vermes), the large group of animals without backbone. In the first edition of Systema Linnaeus described 549 animal forms; the last edition included 5,897 species.

In details he was rather unfortunate as a zoological taxonomist, particularly with the “worms” (Vermes), which he arranged elaborately according to misleading exterior features. He united pigs, armadillos, and moles in the same mammalian order and considered the rhinoceros to be a rodent. But as a whole Linnaeus’ animal system signified a considerable advance. He unhesitatingly united man with the apes and was the first to recognize whales as mammals (1758). Linnaeus was at his best in entomology, which from his youth had been his favorite field apart from botany; the insect orders he recognized are essentially still valid. In the important tenth edition of Systema (1758-1759), he used the “trivial name” consistently in the animal kingdom. As a result it became the standard text for all zoological nomenclature.

Linnaeus’ system of the mineral kingdom had little influence but was not without its interesting features. Although he attached great importance to crystal structure for classification and thus was one of the pioneers in crystallography (De crystal lor um generatione[l747])i he had no feeling for the chemical composition of minerals and consequently stood outside of the fruitful contemporary trends in mineral systematics. More important were his contributions to paleontology and historical geology: he described many fossils, including trilohites (entomolithus), which he correctly placed among the arthropods. In his odd speech on “The Growth of the Earth” (“Oratio de telluris habitabilis incremento” [1743]) and in later works Linnaeus gave his conception of the development of the planet. Inspired by the Christian doctrine of paradise and the old concept of the golden age, he imagined paradise as an island on the equator, from which animals and plants, with the decrease of the water, spread out over the earth. In the 1740’s he contributed observations in the field to the lively debates in Sweden about “water reduction” i.e., the uplift of the Swedish plateau in postglacial time. He believed that the sedimentary strata had been deposited over enormous time periods but, mindful of ecclesiastical orthodoxy, he was wary of expressing his heretical views on the age of the world and the length of the geological epochs.

As a university teacher Linnaeus worked within the medical faculty and published many medical works of varying value. His passion for order and classification extended to his medical work, and through his Genera morborum (1763) he figures with Francois Boissier de Sauvages as the founder of systematic nosology. To a great extent inspired by Sauvages, with whom he maintained a lively correspondence, Linnaeus methodically grouped diseases into classes, orders, and genera according to their symptoms. His theory, explained in Exanthemata viva (1757), which holds that certain diseases are caused by invisible living organisms (acari), is interesting but not original; he cites A. Q. Bachmann (Rivinus) as precursor. Linnaeus applied his botanical knowledge in the three-volume Materia medica (1749-1763) and sought medical profundity in the peculiar Clavis medicinae (1766). Filled with number mysticism and based upon speculations about “marrow” and “bark,” Clavis medicinae is almost incomprehensible in its classification of diseases according to complaints deriving from maternal marrow or paternal bark substance.

Linnaeus had a tendency toward unrestrained, impulsive speculation; for him, vague fancies often became eternal truths that needed no close examination. Similarly, he sometimes put blind faith in fables and folk tales; during his entire life he remained convinced that swallows slept on the bottom of lakes during the winter. He was also rather old-fashioned and simplistic in his general theory of nature, which had a strong Stoic-Aristotelian basis. The peculiar theological remarks that Linnaeus later in life collected under the title Nemesis divina (first published in 1848) also belong in this category. They deal, in melancholic fatalism, with divine retribution as the law ruling human existence.

Linnaeus attained worldwide influence not only through his writings but also through his students. A great many foreign students came to him in Uppsala to learn the foundations of systematic natural science. They included the Scandinavians Peter Ascanius and J. C, Fabricius, the entomologist; the Germans Johann Beckmann, Paul D. Giseke, J, C. D. Schreber; the Russian Barons Demidoff; and the American Adam Kuhn, who became professor in Philadelphia. All of them helped to spread the Linnaean doctrine in their own countries.

The world was Linnaeus’ sphere of activity also in another sense. He sent many of his students abroad, rejoicing in the plants and other natural specimens that he received from them but grieving bitterly when they died of disease or hardship. Peter Kalm traveled in North America and Fredrik Hasselquist in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine; Peter Osbeck and others sailed on East Indian merchant ships to China. Peter Forsskål went to Arabia as a member of a Danish-German expedition, while Pehr Loefling, Linnaeus’ favorite pupil, died in Venezuela. Daniel Solander sailed with Joseph Banks on Captain Cook’s first global circumnavigation, and later Anders Sparrman sailed under Cook’s command across the Pacific. The most industrious of all Linnaean travelers, Karl Peter Thunherg, managed after many trips to gain entry into Japan. Linnaeus not only received botanical specimens from his pupils but also, on occasion, published posthumously their travel descriptions, such as Hasselquist’s Iter Palaestinum (1757) and Loefling’s Iter Hispamcum (1758).

Linnaeus was a complicated man. His enormous scientific production was supported by a self-esteem almost without parallel. He considered his published works to be unblemished masterpieces; no one had ever been a greater botanist or zoologist. Unable to accept criticism, he sulked like a child when he encountered it. He persecuted those, like Buffon, who did not accept him, Linnaeus looked upon himself as a prophet called by God to promulgate the only true dogma; botanists who did not follow the rules and regulations in Philosophia botanica clearly were “heretics.” Of unstable temperament and essentially naïve, he vacillated between overweening pride and brooding despair, His peculiarities often made him difficult; many were repelled by his egocentric behavior, and over the years he became increasingly isolated.

Yet Linnaeus also could radiate an overpowering charm, and almost all of his students loved him. In a sunny mood, as one sees him in his letters and other relaxed moments, he was irresistible, in playful moods he interpreted nature in the light of classical mythology or personified it. His view of nature was deeply religious; central to all his work was God’s omnipotence. He never deviated from the devout physicotheology that was widespread in the eighteenth century, but he stamped it with his peculiar sense of mystery and wonder. “I saw,” he wrote in the introduction to the later editions of Systema naturae, “the infinite, all-knowing and all-powerful God from behind as He went away and I grew dizzy. I followed His footsteps over nature’s fields and saw everywhere an eternal wisdom and power, an inscrutable perfection.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Linnaeus’ library, herbarium, archives, and MSS were left to his only son, Carl von Linné the younger, who succeeded his father as professor of botany. After the son’s death in 1783, the collections were sold for 900 guineas to the young English physician James Edward Smith, who in 1788 founded the Linnean Society of London. Since then the Linnean Society has been the keeper of all Linnaeus’ collections. Swedish libraries have only a few of the more important MSS, such as Prealudia sponsaliorum pluntarum and Nemesis divina, both in the library of Uppsala University.

Two complete modern bibliographies are J. M. Hulth, Bibliographia Linnaeana, I, pt. 1 (Uppsala, 1907); and B. H. Soulsby, A Catalogue of the Works of Linnaeus (London, 1933), which includes works about Linnaeus. Two modern facsimile eds. are Genera plantarum, which is Historiae Naturalis Classica, III (Weinheim,, 1960); and Species plantarum, 2 vols. (London, 1957-1959), both with important intros. by W. T. Stearn.

Praelectiones in ordines naturales plantarum was published by P. D. Giseke (Hamburg, 1792). Collections of letters from Linnaeus or to him include D. H. Stöver, ed., Collectio epistolarum quas … scripsit Carolus a Linné(Hamburg, 1792); J. E. Smith, ed., A Selection of the Correspondence of Linnaeus and Other Naturalists, 2 vols. (London, 1821); C. N. J. Schreiber, ed., Epistolae ad Nicolaum Josephum Jacquin (Vienna, 1841); and Lettres inédites de Linné à Boissier de la Croix de Sauvages (Alais [Alès], 1860). Publication of the whole of Linnaeus’ correspondence was never completed: T. M. Fries, J. M. Hulth, and A. H. Uggia, eds., Bref och skrifvelser of och till Carlvan Linné, 10 vols. (I, 8 vols.; II, 2 vols.) (Stockholm-Uppsala, 1907-1943). E. Ährling, Carl von Linnés brefvexling (Stockholm, 1885), contains a complete list of the letters to Linnaeus in the Linnean Society.

A critical ed, of Linnaeus’ five preserved autobiographies is in E. Malmeström and A. H. Uggla, Vita Caroli Linnaei (Stockholm, 1957).

Works from Linnaeus’ youth, including those on the Lapland and Dalarna trips, are in E. Ährling, Carl von Linnés ungdomsskrifter, 2 vols. (Stockholm, 1888-1889). The Lapland voyage, Iter lapponicum, was translated by J. E, Smith as Laehesis lapponica or a Tour in Lappland 2 vols. (London, 1811); a critical ed. is in T. M. Fries, ed., Shifter of Carl von Linné, V (Uppsala, 1913). There is also A. H. Uggla, ed., Dalaresa(with Iter ad exteros and Iter ad fodinas) (Stockholm, 1953), with commentary.

See also A. H. Uggla, ed., Diaeta naturalis 1733 (Uppsala, 1958); A. O. Lindfors, ed., “Linnés dietetik,” in Uppsala uinkersitets årsskrift (1907); Einar Lönnberg, ed., Föreläsningar öfver djurriket (Uppsala, 1913); E. Malmeström and T. Fredbärj, eds., Nemesis divina (Stockholm, 1968), the first complete ed.

II, Secondary Literature. The literature on Linnaeus is very comprehensive; a survey is given in Sten Lindroth, “Two Centuries of Linnaean Studies,” in Bibliography and Natural History (Lawrence, Kans., 1966), pp. 27-45.

The first biographies appeared in the eighteenth century: Richard Pulteney, A General View of the Writings of Linnaeus (London, 1781); and D. H. Stöver, Leben des Ritters Carl von Linné, 2 vols. (Hamburg, 1792), also translated into English (London, 1794). Another older biography is J. F. X, Gisfel, Carolus Linnaeus, Bin Lebens-bild (Frankfurt, 1873). T. M. Fries, Linné, 2 vols. (Stockholm, 1903), translated into English in an abridged version by Benjamin Daydon Jackson as Linnaeus: The Story of His Life (London, 1923), is the indispensable modern biography for all Linnaean research. Among later, shorter popular biographies are Knut Hagberg, Carl Linnaeus (Stockholm, 1939; rev. ed., 1957), also translated into English (London, 1952); Norah Gourlie, The Prince of Botanists: Carl Linnaeus (London, 1953); Elis Malmeström, Carl von Linné (Stockholm, 1964); Heinz Goerke, Carl von Linné, which is Grosse Naturforscher no. 31 (Stuttgart, 1966); and Wilfrid Blunt, The Compleat Naturalist. A Life of Linnaeus (London, 1971). For Linnaean iconography, see Tycho Tullberg, Linnéporträtt (Uppsala, 1907).

A. J. Boerman has dealt with Carolus Linnaeus als middelaar tussen Nederlanden Zweden (Utrecht, 1953). Articles on Linnaeus’ life and work are being published in Svenska Linnésällskapets årsskrift (Uppsala, 1918- ). Carl von Linné’s Bedeutung als Naturforscher und Arzt (Jena, 1909), published by the Swedish Academy of Science in a collection of papers, reviews Linnaeus’ scientific achievements. Nils von Hofsten deals with Linnaeus’ conception of nature in Kungliga Vetenskaps-societetens årsbok 1957 (Uppsala, 1958), pp. 65-105. An attempt to evaluate Linnaeus in terms of the history of ideas and psychology is Sten Lindroth, “Linné-legend och verklighet,” in Lychnos (1965-1966), pp. 56-122.

Valuable insights on Linnaeus as a botanist are in Julius Sachs, Geschichte der Botanik (Munich, 1875). The best modern summary of Linnaeus’ botanical ideas is Gunnar Eriksson, Botanikens historia i Sverige intill år 1800, which is Lychnos-Bibliotek, XVII, 3 (Uppsala, 1969). His taxonomic and systematic principles are investigated in J. Ramsbottom, “Linnaeus and the Species Concept,” in Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, 150 (1938), 192-219; H. K. Svenson, “On the Descriptive Method of Linnaeus,” in Rhodora, 47 (1945), 273-302, 363-368; C. E. B, Bremekamp, “Linné’s Views on the Hierarchy of the Taxonomic Groups,” in Acta botanica neerlandka,2 (1953), 242-253; A. J. Cain, ’Logic and Memory in Linnaeus’s System of Taxonomy,“in Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, 169 (1958), 144-163; W. T. Stearn, Three Prefaces on Linnaeus and Robert Brown (Weinheim, 1962); and James L. Larson, Reason and Experience. The Representation of Natural Order in the Work of Carl von Linné (Berkeley, 1971).

On the binomial nomenclature, see W. T. Steam, ‘The Background of Linnaeus’s Contributions to the Nomenclature and Methods of Systematic Biology,” in Systematic Zoology, 8 , no. 1 (1959), 4-22; and John L. Heller, “The Early History of Binomial Nomenclature,” in Huntia,1 (1964), 33-70. Linnaeus’ relations to other botanists are discussed in Heinz Goerke, “Die Beziehungen Hallers zu Linné,” in Sudhofts Archiv für Geschichtc der Median tmd der Naturwissensehaften, 38 (1954), 367-377; and Hans Krook, “Lorenz Heister och Linné,” in Svenska Linnésallskapets årsskrift, 31 (1948), 57-72.

On Linnaeus zoological system, see Nils von Hofsten, “Linnés djursystem,” Svenska Linnésällskapets årsskrift, 42 (1959), 9-43; and “A System of ‘Double Entries’ in Zoologiska bidrag frdn Uppsala, 35 (1963), 603-631. In addition there is Thomas Bendyshe, “On the Anthropology of Linnaeus,” in Memoirs Read Before the Anthropological Society of London, 1 (1863-1864), 421-458. On Darwin and Linnaeus, see Robert C. Stauffer, “Ecology in the Long Manuscript Version of Darwin’s Origin of Species and Linnaeus,” in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 104 (1960), 235-241. Linnaeus, geological thought is examined in Tore Frängsmyr, Ceoiogioch skapelsetw. Föreställningar om jordens historic från Hiärne till Bergman, which is Lychnos-Bibliotek, XXVI (Uppsala, 1969), ch. 4; and his nosological system in Fredrik Berg, “Linné ct Sauvages: Les rapports entre leurs systèmes nosologiques,” in Lychnos (1956), pp. 31-54; and Linne’s Systema morborum (Uppsala, 1957).

Elis Malmeström considers Linnaeus as theological thinker in Carl von Linnés religiösa åskådning (Stockholm, 1926); and “Die religiöse Entwicklung und die Weltanschauung von Linnés,” in Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie,, 19 (1942), 31-58. See also Elof Ehnmark, “Linnaeus and the Problem of Immortality,” in Kungliga Humanistiska vetenskapssamfundet i Lund, Årsberättelse (1951-1952), pp. 63-93. Linnaeus’ view of man is analyzed in K. R. V. Wikman, Lachesis and Nemesis, which is Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis, no. 6 (Stockholm, 1970),

For the spread of Linnaean botany, see Frans A. Stafleu, Linnaeus and the Linnaeans. The Spreading of Their Ideas in Systematic Botany (1735-1789) (Utrecht, 1971).

Sten Lindroth