Carl Linnaeus was born at Rashult in Småland, Sweden, on 23 May 1707. From an early age he showed himself to be an inveterate classifier and a lover of flowering plants. On leaving school he continued his studies at the Universities of Lund and Uppsala, graduating in medicine from the latter. In 1730 he became lecturer in botany at Uppsala, but in 1735 he left to continue his training abroad. In that year he was awarded an MD by the university of Harderwijk in the Netherlands, and he subsequently visited France and England before returning to Sweden in 1738. He married and established himself in Stockholm as a practicing medical doctor. In 1741 he was appointed to a chair of medicine, and subsequently of botany, at Uppsala University. A prolific author, his international reputation reached a high level of celebrity, and in 1755 the King of Spain invited him to settle in that country, an offer which he declined. On being granted a patent of nobility by the Swedish Crown he changed his...