Linnaeus, Carolus (Linné, Carl Von)

Carl Linnaeus was born in Roeshult, Sweden, on May 2, 1707. Carl disappointed his father, a Lutheran minister, by displaying no interest in the priesthood. His parents were pleased when he entered the University of Lund in 1727 to study medicine, but after only a year he transferred to the University of Uppsala. There he studied botany, which was part of the medical curriculum. He then went to The Netherlands in 1735 and completed his degree in medicine at the University of Harderwijk, and immediately enrolled for additional studies at the University of Leiden. That same year he published his first edition of the classification of living things, his “Systema Naturae.” He returned to Sweden in 1738, where he worked as a medical doctor until employed by the University of Uppsala in 1740. Linnaeus was known principally as a naturalist and botanist, but he had profound effects on entomology. He established the binomial system of nomenclature, which made possible the modern classification...