Peter Kalm (1716–1779)

Abstract

While a graduate student at Uppsala University in Sweden, Pehr (Peter) Kalm became a pupil of famed botanist and taxonomist Carl von Linné (Carolus Linnœus). In 1744 Kalm assisted Linné on a research trip in Russia, and the following year he was elected to the Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1747 he was offered a professorship in agriculture at the Åbo Academy in what is today Finland, but was almost immediately given leave to travel to North America on a research trip sponsored by the Academy of Sciences. After a remarkably difficult trip that included a shipwreck and numerous delays, Kalm finally reached Philadelphia on September 15, 1848. Over the next three years, he traveled throughout the mid-Atlantic region (primarily Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey) and Canada. He returned to Sweden late in the spring of 1751, where he resumed his academic career and worked on the account of his Travels, which appeared in three volumes (1753–1761). In addition to his work as a naturalist, Kalm was ordained as a Lutheran clergyman in 1757 and awarded a doctorate in theology in 1768 from the University of Lund.