Carl Linnaeus main works. Carl Linnaeus short biography. Life in Holland, new works
By the 18th century scientists and nature lovers have done a great job collecting and describing plants and animals all over the world. But it became more and more difficult to navigate in the ocean of information accumulated by them. The Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus generalized and brought this knowledge into a system. He laid the foundations of modern taxonomy.
Carl Linnaeus was born on May 23, 1707 in the family of a village priest. Carl's mother from childhood brought up in him a love for all living things, especially for flowers.
But the future president of the Swedish Academy of Sciences remained very indifferent to schoolwork. Latin was not given to him at all. The teachers said that education, apparently, was not up to the boy - it would be better to teach him some kind of craft. The angry father decided to send Karl to be trained by a shoemaker.
And the career of a shoemaker would have been waiting for Liney, if a familiar doctor had not persuaded the boy's father to allow him to study medicine. In addition, he helped Carl finish high school.
Karl studied medicine and biology at the universities of the Swedish cities of Lund and Uppsala. He lived in his student years in poverty.
When Karl was 25 years old, the leadership of the Uppsala University invited him to go on a scientific journey through northern Scandinavia - Lapland, to explore its nature. He carried all his luggage on his shoulders. During this journey, he ate what he had to, barely got out of the swampy swamps, fought mosquitoes. And once he ran into a more serious enemy - a robber who almost killed him. Despite all the obstacles, Linnaeus collected samples of Lapland plants.
At home, Linnaeus could not find a permanent job in his specialty, and for several years he moved to Holland, where he was in charge of one of the best botanical gardens in the country.
Here he got degree doctor, here in 1735 his most famous work, The System of Nature, was published. During the life of Linnaeus, 12 editions of this book were published. All this time, Linnaeus constantly supplemented it and increased its volume from 14 pages to 3 volumes.
Carl Linnaeus system:
The concept of the form.
In order to “sort through” a huge number of descriptions of plants and animals, some kind of systematic unit was needed. Such a unit, common to all living things, Linnaeus considered the species. By species, Linnaeus called a group of individuals similar to each other, like children of the same parents and their children. A species consists of many similar individuals that produce fertile offspring. For example, forest raspberries are one species, stone berries are another, cloudberries are the third species of plants. All domestic cats are one species, tigers are another, lions are a third species of animals. Consequently, the whole organic world consists of various types of plants and animals. All living nature consists, as it were, of separate links - species.
Linnaeus discovered and described about 1,500 species of plants and over 400 species of animals, he distributed all types of plants and animals into large groups - classes, he divided each class into orders, each order into genera. Each genus of Linnaeus was composed of similar species.
Nomenclature.
Linnaeus began to give names to species in the very Latin that was so poorly given to him in his school years. Latin was at that time the international language of science. Thus, Linnaeus solved a difficult problem: after all, when the names were given on different languages, under many names the same species could be described.
A very important merit of Linnaeus was the introduction of double species names (binary nomenclature) into practice. He proposed to name each species with two words. The first is the name of the genus, which includes closely related species. For example, a lion, a tiger, a domestic cat belong to the genus Felis (Cat). The second word is the name of the species itself (respectively, Felis leo, Felis tigris, Felis do-mestica). In the same way, the European Spruce and Tien Shan Spruce (blue) species are combined into the genus Spruce, the White Hare and Brown Hare species into the Hare genus. Thanks to the double nomenclature, the similarity, commonality, unity of the species that form one genus is revealed.
Systematics of animals.
Linnaeus divided animals into 6 classes:
mammals
Amphibians (in this class he placed amphibians and reptiles)
Insects
The number of "worms" includes molluscs, jellyfish, various worms, and all microorganisms (the latter were combined by Linnaeus into a single genus - Chaos infusorium).
Man (whom he called "reasonable man", Homo sapiens) Linnaeus quite boldly for his time placed in the class of mammals and the detachment of primates along with monkeys. He did it 120 years before Charles Darwin. He did not believe that man was descended from other primates, but he saw a great similarity in their structure.
Systematics of plants.
Linnaeus approached the systematization of plants in more detail than the systematization of animals. He singled out 24 classes among plants. Linnaeus understood that the most essential and characteristic part of a plant is a flower. He attributed plants with one stamen in a flower to the 1st class, to the 2nd - with two, to the 3rd - with three, etc. Mushrooms, lichens, algae, horsetails, ferns - in general, all, devoid of flowers, were in the 24th class ("mystery").
The artificiality of Linnaeus' systematics.
The system of plants and animals of Linnaeus was largely artificial. Plants far from each other (for example, carrots and currants) ended up in the same class only because their flowers have the same number of stamens. Many related plants ended up in different classes. The systematics of Linnaeus is artificial, also because it helped to recognize plants and animals, but did not reflect the course of the historical development of the world.
Linnaeus was aware of this deficiency in his system. He believed that future naturalists should create a natural system of plants and animals, which should take into account all the features of organisms, and not just one or two signs. Trying to develop a natural plant system, Linnaeus became convinced that the science of that time did not provide the knowledge necessary for this.
Despite the artificiality, the Linnaean system played a positive role in biology. The systematic subdivisions and dual nomenclature proposed by Linnaeus have become firmly established in science and are used in modern botany and zoology. Later, two more divisions were introduced:
Type - the highest division that unites similar classes;
Family - uniting similar genera
Linnaeus innovations.
Carl Linnaeus reformed the botanical language. He first proposed such plant names as: corolla, anther, nectary, ovary, stigma, filament, receptacle, perianth. In total, K. Linnaeus introduced about a thousand terms into botany.
Linnaeus' views on nature.
Science at that time was influenced by religion. Linnaeus was an idealist, he argued that in nature there are as many species of plants and animals as "how many different forms the almighty created at the beginning of the world." Linnaeus believed that plant and animal species do not change; they retained their characteristics "from the moment of creation." According to Linnaeus, every modern species is the offspring of the original parent pair created by God. Each species reproduces, but retains, in his opinion, unchanged all the features of this ancestral pair.
As a good observer, Linnaeus could not help but see the contradictions between the ideas about the complete immutability of plants and animals with what is observed in nature. He allowed the formation of varieties within a species due to the influence of climate change and other external conditions on organisms.
The idealistic and metaphysical doctrine of the creation and immutability of species dominated biology until early XIX century, until it was refuted as a result of the discovery of many evidence for evolution.
Carl Linnaeus
Linnaeus (Linne, Linnaeus) Karl (May 23, 1707, Roshuld - January 10, 1778, Uppsala), Swedish naturalist, member of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1762). He gained worldwide fame thanks to the system of flora and fauna he created. Born in the family of a village pastor. Studied natural and medical sciences at Lund (1727) and Uppsala (since 1728) universities. In 1732 he made a trip to Lapland, which resulted in the work "Flora of Lapland" (1732, complete edition in 1737). In 1735 he moved to the city of Hartekamp (Holland), where he was in charge of the botanical garden; defended his doctoral dissertation “A new hypothesis of intermittent fevers”. In the same year he published the book "The System of Nature" (published during his lifetime in 12 editions). From 1738 he was engaged in medical practice in Stockholm; in 1739 he headed the naval hospital, won the right to dissect corpses in order to determine the cause of death. Participated in the creation of the Swedish Academy of Sciences and became its first president (1739). Since 1741, the head of the department at Uppsala University, where he taught medicine and natural sciences.
The system of flora and fauna created by Linnaeus completed the enormous work of botanists and zoologists of the 1st half of the 18th century. One of the main merits of Linnaeus is that in the "System of Nature" he applied and introduced the so-called binary nomenclature, according to which each species is designated by two Latin names - generic and species. Linnaeus defined the concept of “species” using both morphological (similarity within the offspring of one family) and physiological (presence of fertile offspring) criteria, and established a clear subordination between systematic categories: class, order, genus, species, variation.
Linnaeus based the classification of plants on the number, size and arrangement of the stamens and pistils of a flower, as well as the sign of one-, two- or multi-homogeneity of the plant, since he believed that the reproductive organs are the most essential and permanent parts of the body in plants. Based on this principle, he divided all plants into 24 classes. Due to the simplicity of the nomenclature he used, descriptive work was greatly facilitated, the species received clear characteristics and names. Linnaeus himself discovered and described about 1,500 plant species.
Linnaeus divided all animals into 6 classes:
- mammals
- Birds
- Amphibians
- Fishes
- Worms
- Insects
The class of amphibians included amphibians and reptiles, and he included all forms of invertebrates known in his time, except for insects, to the class of worms. One of the advantages of this classification is that man was included in the system of the animal kingdom and assigned to the class of mammals, to the order of primates. The classifications of plants and animals proposed by Linnaeus are artificial from a modern point of view, since they are based on a small number of arbitrarily taken signs and do not reflect the actual relationship between different forms. So, on the basis of only one common feature - the structure of the beak - Linnaeus tried to build a “natural” system based on the totality of many features, but did not reach the goal.
Linnaeus was opposed to the idea of a true development of the organic world; he believed that the number of species remains constant, with the time of their “creation” they did not change, and therefore the task of systematics is to reveal the order in nature established by the “creator”. However, the vast experience accumulated by Linnaeus, his acquaintance with plants from various localities, could not but shake his metaphysical ideas. In his last writings, Linnaeus, in a very cautious form, suggested that all species of the same genus were originally one species, and allowed the possibility of the emergence of new species resulting from crosses between already existing species.
Linnaeus also classified soils and minerals, human races, diseases (according to symptoms); discovered the poisonous and healing properties of many plants. Linnaeus is the author of a number of works, mainly in botany and zoology, as well as in the field of theoretical and practical medicine (“Medicinal Substances”, “Generations of Diseases”, “Key to Medicine”).
The libraries, manuscripts and collections of Linnaeus were sold by his widow to the English botanist Smith, who founded (1788) in London the Linnean Society, which still exists today as one of the largest scientific centers.
The life of the great systematizer of Nature, Carl Linnaeus, is like the old Christmas stories, where the suffering of a poor baby is first described, and then everything ends with a touching finale. In addition, there were so many almost symbolic coincidences in his biography that it acquires a mystical flavor inherent in such plots.
He was born in 1707, in May, when the house smelled intoxicatingly of flowers. The aroma came from nearby fields, and most importantly - from the parent garden. His father, a poor rural pastor, a descendant of local peasants, was probably still drawn to the land. When the venerable Linnaeus was not in the service of God, he liked to tinker in his well-known garden under the spreading old linden tree. She was considered sacred, and the surname Linneus was taken in her honor. After all, linden in Swedish is “lind”. The honest pastor wished the same fate for his firstborn, Karl. But it turned out the opposite: flowers became the main thing for the son. True, something fell to God, but from the meager remnants of time.
The charming and mysterious world of flowers bewitched the boy from the cradle. He stopped crying and calmed down when his mother shoved any stalk into his hand. family tradition preserved the story of how four-year-old Karl listened to the explanations of the gardener-father given to inquisitive neighbors. His eyes were so bright and his cheeks were so flushed that his mother thought her son was ill. And then, when he was at school in a neighboring town, he was invariably listed as one of the most incompetent, since his thoughts hovered far from the stuffy class. True, in physics and mathematics, the grades were very good, but the basic subjects necessary for the future pastor - Latin, Greek and Hebrew - were in a terrible state. The teachers, who waved their hand at the negligent Linneus, and classmates who did not understand his ridiculous hobby, called him nothing more than a “botanist”. The irony of people gradually turned into the irony of fate.
But that happened many years later. So far, there have been some problems. When my father came to the city to see a doctor and learn about Karl's progress, he was amazed at the unanimous opinion of the teachers. They all advised taking their son from the gymnasium and teaching him a trade. The frustrated pastor had already decided that Carl would get his daily bread with twigs and scissors. Why spend the last thalers when three more children are growing up in the family? But, by a happy coincidence, the doctor he went to see taught physics at the gymnasium. However, this is not so surprising, because then physics and medicine were one discipline.
Upon learning that the patient had decided to send his son as an apprentice to a shoemaker, the doctor was horrified and firmly declared to the dumbfounded pastor: “And I tell you, in spite of everyone, that of all the students of the gymnasium, only Karl predicts a brilliant future.” The physician Rotman (his name must not be forgotten) not only dissuaded the pastor from his undertaking, but took the boy to his house for maintenance, studied with him himself and even weakened his aversion to Latin by reading the works of Pliny the Elder on natural science. True, even in the years of Linnaeus's glory, colleagues, listening to his Latin speech, said that "he is not Cicero." Jean-Jacques Rousseau, justifying his friend, objected: “It was free for Cicero not to know botany!”.
Nevertheless, Carl Linnaeus graduated from the gymnasium, albeit with a curious characteristic that could bring a modern adherent of the bureaucratic style to a heart attack. “Young people in schools are like young trees in a nursery. It happens sometimes - although rarely - that wild nature tree, despite all the cares, does not lend itself to culture. But transplanted into another soil, the tree is ennobled and brings good fruits. Only in this hope does the young man go to the university, where, perhaps, he will find himself in a climate favorable to his development.
Returning home, Karl endured a serious battle with his parents, as a result of which two decisions were made. First, never let his brother into the garden, lest he also go astray. Secondly, to give Karl a letter of introduction to a distant relative, the cathedral dean in the nearby university city of Lund. The first decision bore fruit, and Samuel Linneus eventually became a pastor in his native village. The second, alas, turned out to be fruitless. When a dusty pedestrian, dreaming of a student's bench, reached Lund, a funeral procession met him on the streets of the city. They buried the cathedral dean. Crushed by failure, the young man trudged behind "behind the coffin of his hopes," as one of Linnaeus's biographers writes. Since then, he, by his own admission, could not bear the ringing of bells.
Returning home meant the complete collapse of a dream, and Carl wandered aimlessly around the city, where he had no shelter, no acquaintances, no chance of entering the university due to his destructive characteristics. But suddenly (oh, this is a word full of optimism!) He runs into his school teacher, who became a professor of philosophy at the university. Probably, this teacher was not a very vindictive person, since he introduced Linnaeus to the rector as his student. And now, without unnecessary formalities, he was already enrolled as a student and was even assigned to a free stay with Professor Stobeus.
The professor's apartment is not only a miniature hostel, but also a small natural museum and a good library. True, books at that time were quite expensive, and therefore they are given to read only by especially trusted people. Alas, freshman Linneus is not one of them. However, using the knowledge of physiology gained from Rotman, Karl gives advice to one of those admitted to book treasures, and in return receives tomes from the professor's library for the night. And the days of a half-starved, but happy existence flew by.
Soon the mistress of the house noticed the gleam of fire in the window of the guest. She thought that he forgot to blow out the candle in the evenings, and, fearing a fire, complained to the professor. Stobeus himself caught the tenant at the scene of the crime. Opening the door softly, he was surprised to see the young man not in bed, but immersed in the study of a volume from his own library. A frank confession followed. “Come see me in the morning,” said the professor, blowing out the candle. Karl walked into Stobeus's office with his head bowed. The professor was not without flaws: lame, crooked, excessively quick-tempered ... But anger was not on this list. “Here, take it,” he said to the young man, holding out the keys to the library, “you need to sleep at night.” Noticing the zeal of Karl, he began to invite him to his own table, took him on visits to the sick, allowed him to answer letters from patients and write out prescriptions. Everything turned out as well as possible, Stobeus promised even to transfer his clientele to Linnaeus later. And yet the young student was less and less willing to go to class. Philologists and theologians looked down on physicians and botanists here as well. The level of teaching in the natural sciences was extremely low. Karl decides to part with the hospitable professorial house and move to the ancient Uppsala University, where the famous naturalists Rudbeck and Roberg teach.
Everything starts over. Cardboard insoles are cut into holey shoes. A smaller part of the money is spent on food, and a large part is spent on books and candles; when it gets really tight, you have, as they say, to save on candles, reading by the city lamp. And life strikes its pitiless blows; mother dies, father falls seriously ill; relatives keep writing and writing so that he fulfills his filial duty, returns home, helps to put his sisters on their feet ... Finally, the decision is made. There is no more strength to endure the pangs of conscience and the pangs of hunger. Before leaving, collecting alms on the way back home, Karl stopped by to say goodbye to the university botanical garden. But, apparently, fate was preparing this person for the role intended for him, sending him help at critical moments. This time, Olaf Celsius, doctor of theology, played the role of providence.
A passionate amateur botanist, he decided to combine his main occupation and "hobby", creating the work "Plants Mentioned in the Bible". An accidental acquaintance with a rare flower - and immediately flashed like gunpowder, a conversation that happens when experts who are passionate about their work meet. Names gleaned from the synonymy of the French botanist Tournefort rained down, long Latin definitions, comparisons of carefully cherished herbariums ...
Professor Celsius himself writes a letter to Karl's father. He sheltered the young man in his house, gave him private lessons, they roam the fields together, looking for flowers and arranging them in albums according to the French system, confused, complex, cumbersome ... In the traditional message to his beloved professor, which was supposed to be done in poetic form, Linnaeus turns to prose: “I was not born a poet, but to some extent a botanist ...” Olaf Celsius liked his reasoning about the sexual characteristics of plants, about the methods of reproduction, about the possibility of building a classification on this basis. It is not known whether the venerable theologian published his biblical-botanical treatise, but, undoubtedly, it did not bring him fame. But the unpublished New Year's message of Linnaeus, where for the first time the outline of his wonderful system is outlined, brought immortality to this kind man.
The epistolary scientific work of the young scientist was also highly appreciated by Professor Rudbeck, who was introduced to it by Olaf Celsius. Karl Linneus becomes an assistant professor, and sometimes even lectures for him. The position of the young man was strengthened. As a result, he had an envious enemy, an enemy who pursued him for many years - Dr. Nils Rosen, a teacher of Rudbeck's children, who was aiming for a professorship. But a friend also appeared - Peter Artezy, who was also fond of classification, but not of plants, but of fish. He is often credited as the father of ichthyology. Most likely, he became the first critic of the Linnaean system, strengthening Carl's confidence in his rightness.
Niels Rosen was not a stupid person, before many venerable professors, he appreciated the depth of thought and the vastness of the knowledge of the young scientist and therefore began to put him all sorts of slingshots. Taking advantage of the fact that Linnaeus did not have a scientific degree, and sometimes - simply with the help of slander and slander, Rosen began to survive him from Uppsala.
First, Linnaeus leaves for a difficult and dangerous expedition in Lapland, travels around Dalecarlia collecting plants and minerals. Yet, despite the value of the collections he amassed and the originality of the reports prepared, it becomes clear to him that without a doctorate, his work will not be appreciated. But according to tradition, one should have defended himself not in Sweden, for there is no prophet in his own country, but in Holland. However, for such a trip, money is needed, which, as always, is negligible.
This time it was not friendship that helped, but love. The heart of the young scientist was captivated by the young beauty Sarah Liza, the daughter of a doctor. Having received consent to marriage, he asks his future father-in-law for a loan. The latter, although he was, in the words of Linnaeus, "a gentle friend of money", for the sake of his daughter's happiness forked out.
And now Carl is on his way. The few works he published did not escape the attention of foreigners. They already know him. In Hamburg, a local burgomaster shows a young naturalist a rare curiosity - a hydra with seven heads. It was bought for big money and even described in scientific treatises. To the indignation of the gullible host, Linnaeus exposed a clever charlatan forgery. In the summer of 1735, a public debate took place in the city of Garderwick on the topic: "A new hypothesis about the cause of intermittent fever." The happy doctor receives a silk hat and a gold ring, symbols of his scientific rank.
Scientific life in Holland seems to be in full swing compared to the Swedish outback. The new friends use their own money to publish Linnean's System of Nature, which classifies the three kingdoms: minerals, plants, and animals. The book gained unheard-of popularity, gradually swelling, it withstood 13 editions in a short time.
Of particular importance is the classification of the plant world according to the reproductive organ - the flower. Plants are divided into 24 classes, with the first 13 being determined simply by the number of stamens in the flower, the next 7 classes being determined by their location and length, followed by unisexual flowers, bisexual and myogamous. The ease of definition and brevity of the system are the captivating advantages of Linnaeus's classification. Of course, the author understood the primitiveness and inaccuracy of the division he proposed: cereals scattered into different classes, trees coexisted with wildflowers. But dashing trouble is the beginning. After all, the main thing is the found principle: essential features as the basis for distinction. And what is more important in a flower than the reproductive system? In any case, that Babylonian pandemonium, after which the botanists ceased to understand each other, has now been eliminated. The task of classification was so acute that the famous naturalist of that time, Hermann Burgav, generally defined botany as "a part of natural science, through which plants are successfully and with the least difficulty known and kept in memory."
The newly minted doctor, of course, wanted to get acquainted with Boergav. But it wasn't that easy! Even the Russian Tsar Peter I waited several hours for an appointment: the popular doctor and renowned naturalist was very busy. For several days Linnaeus hung around in the reception room of the Leiden celebrity, but never received an audience. However, after he sent his "System of Nature" to Boergav, he immediately sent his carriage for him.
Linnaeus's Dutch period was both happy and fruitful. Boerhaave introduced him to the burgomaster of Amsterdam, the director of the East India Company, Clifffort, who asked him to describe an amazing garden near Haarlem, full of exotic flowers and rare animals. The conscientious edition of Cliffort's Garden served as a model for naturalists for many years. Then come "Fundament a Botanika", "Critika Botanika" and "Genera planiarum". For the last of these works, Linnaeus was elected to the Saxon Academy. How many more will there be, these academies that have honored him with their membership: Paris, St. Petersburg, Madrid, Berlin ...
It is curious that Linnaeus has not only original thoughts, but also a form. He compiled his book "Fundamentals of Botany" from 365 (according to the number of days in a year) aphorisms, breaking them, of course, into 12 sections. In this book, which lists the main guiding ideas of Linnaeus, which, as the author himself writes, reflects 7 years of work and a careful study of 8 thousand plants, he could not resist and also classified botanists.
It cannot be said that the Linnaean system was enthusiastically accepted by everyone. Some did not want to relearn, others found it too speculative, and still others - harmful. For example, Professor Johann Sigesbeck, invited from Germany to St. Petersburg, wrote a dissertation condemning the Linnaean system as immoral. For God would never allow such a vice in the vegetable kingdom that several men should have a common wife. What can be demanded from Sigesbeck, whose first scientific memoir in Russia was devoted to the refutation of the book of Copernicus, if even after more than a hundred years one professor, giving a lecture on plant reproduction, removed the ladies from it. Linnaeus did not dignify Sigesbeck with an answer, but was deeply offended by him. After all, shortly before that, he christened one of the plants in his honor as "Eastern Sigesbeckia". Once a German professor received from Linnaeus seeds with the inscription "Cuculus ingrains" - an ungrateful cuckoo. When he sowed them, the composite plant "Sigesbeckia orientalis" grew.
According to contemporaries, Carl Linnaeus was a cheerful person, appreciated a good joke and a sharp anecdote. From his scientific works it is clear that he not only seriously studied the logic of Aristotle, from which many concepts and definitions were drawn, but also that his studies in the classics did not dry up his sense of humor. So, for example, he called one thorny plant Pisontea in honor of the critic Piso. And the family, the flower of which consisted of two long stamens and one short, was dubbed Kommelin, in memory of the three Kommelin brothers. Two of them became famous scientists, and the third did not achieve anything.
Before returning to his homeland, Linnaeus decided to visit Paris. Here he meets Reaumur, Rousseau and the famous French florist Bernard Jussier. Linnaeus came to a lecture by a colleague and modestly placed himself in the back row. Raising over his head a recently received unknown flower from a distant continent, Jussier asked: "Who can say where this plant comes from?" Everyone was silent, and the professor was about to answer himself, when the voice of the guest gave the correct answer. "You are Linnaeus," said Jussieu, "for only he could do it."
The triumphal procession of the famous scientist was interrupted after returning to his homeland. There was no job, no money. The glory of Linnaeus has not yet reached his compatriots. Again, as in his youth, he is starving, trying to earn money through the art of medicine. But at first, no one wanted to entrust the doctor of sciences even with the treatment of a dog. Things were slowly getting better. Linnaeus treated both for free and for lunch in a tavern, until he finally acquired a clientele. Money appeared, he was invited to the houses of the nobility and even to the royal palace. At this time, he bitterly wrote to a friend: "Aesculapius brings all the good things, and the flora - only sigezbeks."
Linnaeus even thought of giving up science, but it turned out to be beyond his strength. Several enthusiasts decided to create an academy of sciences. The post of president was drawn by lot on flowers. Carl Linnaeus was elected the first president of the Swedish Academy. His life has finally entered a cloudless phase. Every year his works were published, and students came to him from all over Europe. He became the head of the department at his native Uppsala University and then its rector; received the Order of the Polar Star and the nobility. Not only his position changed, but even his surname (Linneus began to be called in the noble manner of von Linne). But the life principles of the "king of flowers" remained the same. He worked with the same passion as in his youth, and believed that "no position can replace the position of an honest man."
There were several clauses in Linnaeus' will. All of them were fulfilled, except for one: not to send condolences. They came and went from academies, universities, departments, colleagues and students, saying goodbye to the great systematizer of Nature.
Who is Carl Linnaeus, contribution to science, what are his? What is this natural scientist known for? Let's consider today.
How did Carl Linnaeus live, what is his biography?
The future scientist was born in 1707 in Sweden, in the family of a local priest. The family did not live well, his father had a small plot of land, where the young naturalist first discovered the world of plants. On the land plots of his parents, the boy collected various herbs and flowers, dried them and created the first herbariums in his life.
Like many outstanding personalities, Karl did not show great aspirations in relation to science as a child. Teachers considered him untalented and unpromising, and therefore did not pay much attention to him.
Time passed, the future scientist grew up, but interest in the living world did not fade away. However, his parents sent him to Lundsky medical University, where Karl studied many scientific disciplines, including chemistry and biology.
After being transferred to Uppsala University in 1728, the young man met his peer Peter Artedi. Later, it was in collaboration with him that Karl would begin joint work on revising natural history classifications.
In 1729, Charles met with Professor Olof Celsius, who was passionately fond of botany. This event turned out to be fateful for the young man, since the young man got the opportunity to access scientific library.
First scientific expedition
In 1732, Karl was sent to Lapland by the Royal Scientific Society, from where the future genius brought a whole collection of minerals, plants and animals. Later, Linnaeus presented a report, which he called the "Flora of Lapland", but these works did not glorify the future scientist.
However, this report touches on very important points. Linnaeus first mentions such a concept as a classification of plants, consisting of 24 classes. The Swedish universities of those years were not able to issue diplomas and therefore there was a need to move to another country. After the end of such educational institution the young specialist did not have the right to carry out scientific and teaching activities.
Moving to Holland
In the first year of his stay in Holland, Linnaeus defends his dissertation and becomes a doctor of medicine. Nevertheless, the scientist does not put aside his passion for botany, combining medical practice and scientific activity.
In 1735, Linnaeus presents his outstanding work, entitled The System of Nature. It is this work that will glorify the scientist and form the basis of the classification of plant and animal species.
Linnaeus proposed the so-called binary nomenclature for naming species (used to this day). Each plant and animal was designated by two Latin words: the first - was determined by the genus, the second - by the species.
The classification of plants was simple. The number and location of leaves, the size of stamens and pistils, the size of plants, and other criteria were at the heart of determining the generic affiliation.
Binary nomenclature was enthusiastically received and quickly and easily took root in the scientific world, as it put an end to the existence of complete chaos in the classification of objects in the living world.
This work has been reprinted 10 times. The reason for this lies in the advancement of scientific thought and the discovery of new plant species. The final version was presented scientific world in 1761, where Linnaeus describes 7540 species and 1260 genera of plants. Belonging to the same genus determined the degree of kinship of objects of the plant world.
In his botanical works, the scientist for the first time determined the presence of sexes in plants. This discovery was created on the basis of the study of the structure of pistils and stamens. Until that time, it was believed that plants are devoid of sexual characteristics.
The scientist himself discovered about one and a half thousand new plant species, to which he gave an accurate description and determined the place in the classification he created. Thus, the plant kingdom was greatly expanded by the writings of Linnaeus.
Passion for zoology
Linnaeus also contributed to zoology. The scientist classified animal world, in which he distinguished the following classes: insects, fish, amphibians, birds, mammals and worms. Carl quite accurately attributed the human species to the class of mammals, the order of primates.
Even having convinced himself of the possibility of interspecific crossing and the emergence of new species, Karl still adhered to the theological theory of the origin of life. Any deviation from religious dogmas Linnaeus regarded as an apostasy, deserving of blame.
Other classifications
An inquisitive mind did not give him rest. Already on the "slope" of life, the scientist made attempts to classify minerals, diseases and medicinal substances, but he did not succeed in repeating his former success, and these works did not receive an enthusiastic perception of the scientific community.
Last years life
In 1774, the scientist fell seriously ill. In the struggle for his life, he spent four whole years and in 1778 the outstanding botanist died. Nevertheless, his merits to science can hardly be overestimated, since Linnaeus "laid the foundation" of botany and zoology and largely determined the trends of further development. In London, to this day there is a scientific society that bears the name of a great scientist, at the same time being one of the leading scientific centers.
Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) - Swedish naturalist, naturalist, botanist, physician, the founder of modern biological systematics, the creator of the system of flora and fauna, the first president of the Swedish Academy of Sciences (since 1739), a foreign honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1754). For the first time he consistently applied binary nomenclature and built the most successful artificial classification of plants and animals, described about 1500 plant species. Carl Linnaeus advocated the permanence of species and creationism. Author of "The System of Nature" (1735), "Philosophy of Botany" (1751), etc.
In natural science, principles must be confirmed by observation.
Linnaeus Carl
Carl Linnaeus was born May 23, 1707, in Roshult. Linnaeus was the firstborn in the family of the country pastor and florist Nils Linneus. Linnaeus's father replaced his surname Ingemarson with the Latinized surname "Linneus" after a giant linden tree (in Swedish Lind) that grew near the ancestral home. Moving from Roshult to the neighboring Stenbrohult (Småland province in southern Sweden), Niels planted a beautiful garden, of which Linnaeus said: "this garden inflamed my mind with an unquenchable love for plants."
Passion for plants distracted Carl Linnaeus from home lessons. Parents hoped that teaching in the nearby town of Växjo would cool Karl's passion. However, in primary school(since 1716), and then at the gymnasium (since 1724), the boy studied poorly. He neglected theology and was considered the worst student in the ancient languages. Only the need to read Pliny's Natural History and the works of modern botanists made him learn Latin, the universal language of science of that time. Karl was introduced to these writings by Dr. Rothman. Encouraging the interest in botany of a gifted young man, he prepared him for entering the university.
Nature sometimes works wonders with the help of art.
Linnaeus Carl
In August 1727, twenty-year-old Carl Linnaeus became a student at Lund University. Acquaintance with the herbarium collections of the natural study of Professor Stobeus prompted Linnaeus to thoroughly study the flora of the Lund environs, and by December 1728 he compiled a catalog of rare plants "Catalogus Plantarum Rariorum Scaniae et Smolandiae".
In the same year, Carl Linnaeus continued to study medicine at Uppsala University, where friendly communication with student Peter Artedi (later a famous ichthyologist) brightened up the dryness of the course of lectures on natural history. Joint excursions with professor-theologian O. Celsius, who helped financially impoverished Linnaeus, and classes in his library expanded Linnaeus's botanical horizons, and he owed to the benevolent professor O. Rudbeck Jr. not only the beginning of his teaching career, but also the idea of traveling to Lapland (May -September 1732).
The purpose of this expedition was to study all three kingdoms of nature - minerals, plants and animals - a vast and little-studied region of Fennoscandia, as well as the life and customs of the Laplanders (Saami). The results of the four-month journey were first summarized by Linnaeus in a small work in 1732; the complete Flora lapponica, one of Linnaeus's most famous works, appeared in 1737.
In 1734 Carl Linnaeus traveled to Sweden the province of Dalecarlia at the expense of the governor of this province, and later, having settled in Falun, he was engaged in mineralogy and assaying. Here he first engaged in medical practice, and also found a bride. The engagement of Linnaeus with the daughter of the doctor Moreus took place on the eve of the groom's departure to Holland, where Linnaeus went as an applicant for a doctorate in medicine in order to be able to support his family (a requirement of the future father-in-law).
Having successfully defended his dissertation on intermittent fever (paint brushes) at the university in Gardewijk on June 24, 1735, K. Linnaeus plunged into the study of the richest natural science rooms in Amsterdam. Then he went to Leiden, where he published one of his most important works, Systema naturae (The System of Nature, 1735). It was a summary of the kingdoms of minerals, plants and animals, set out in tables of only 14 pages, however, in a sheet format. Linnaeus divided plants into 24 classes, based on the number, size and arrangement of stamens and pistils.
The new system turned out to be practical and allowed even amateurs to identify plants, especially since Linnaeus streamlined the terms of descriptive morphology and introduced binary (binomial) nomenclature to designate species, which simplified the search and identification of both plants and animals. In the future, Carl Linnaeus supplemented his work, and the last lifetime (12th) edition consisted of 4 books and 2335 pages. Linnaeus himself was aware of himself as the chosen one, called to interpret the Creator's plan, but only the recognition of the famous Dutch doctor and naturalist Herman Boerhaave opened the way to glory for him.
After Leiden, Carl Linnaeus lived in Amsterdam with the director of the Botanical Garden, studying plants and creating scientific papers. Soon, on the recommendation of Boerhaave, he received a job as a family doctor and head of the botanical garden from the director of the East India Company and mayor of Amsterdam G. Cliffort. For two years (1736-1737) spent in Hartekamp (near Haarlem), where the rich and plant lover Cliffort created an extensive collection of plants from around the world, Linnaeus published a number of works that brought him European fame and unquestioned authority among botanists. In a small book "Fundamente Botanicc" ("Fundamentals of Botany"), compiled from 365 aphorisms (according to the number of days in a year), Linnaeus outlined the principles and ideas that guided him in his work as a systematic botanist. In the famous aphorism “we number as many species as there are different forms that were first created”, he expressed his belief in the constancy of the number and invariability of species from the time of their creation (later he allowed the emergence of new species as a result of crossings between already existing species). Here is a curious classification of the botanists themselves.
The works "Genera plantarun" ("Genera of plants") and "Critica Botanica" are devoted to the establishment and description of genera (994) and problems of botanical nomenclature, and "Bibliotheca Botanica" - botanical bibliography. The systematic description of the Clifffort Botanical Garden compiled by Carl Linnaeus - "Hortus Cliffortianus" (1737) became a model for such writings for a long time. In addition, Linnaeus published the "Ichthyology" of his untimely deceased friend Artedi, preserving for science the work of one of the founders of ichthyology.
Returning to his homeland in the spring of 1738, Linnaeus married and settled in Stockholm, practicing medicine, teaching and science.
In 1739 he became one of the founders of the Royal Academy of Sciences and its first president, received the title of "royal botanist".
In May 1741 Carl Linnaeus traveled around Gotland and on the island of Oland, and in October of the same year, with a lecture “On the necessity of traveling around the fatherland,” he began his professorship at Uppsala University. Many aspired to study botany and medicine in Uppsala. The number of students at the university tripled, and in the summer it increased many times thanks to the famous excursions, which ended with a solemn procession and a loud proclamation of “Vivat Linnaeus!” by all its members.
Since 1742, Linnaeus restored the University Botanical Garden, almost destroyed by fire, placing in it a particularly lively collection of Siberian plants. Rarities sent from all over the world by his traveling students were also grown here.
In 1751, Philosophia Botanica (Philosophy of Botany) was published, and in 1753, probably the most significant and important work for botany by Carl Linnaeus, Species plantarum (Plant Species).
Surrounded by admiration, showered with honors, elected an honorary member of many learned societies and Academies, including St. Petersburg (1754), elevated to the nobility in 1757, Linnaeus, in his declining years, acquired the small estate of Hammarby, where he spent time peacefully occupied with his own garden and collections . Carl Linnaeus died in Uppsala in the seventy-first year.
In 1783, after the death of Linnaeus's son, Charles, his widow, she sold the herbarium, collections, manuscripts, and the scientist's library for 1,000 guineas to England. In 1788, the Linnean Society was founded in London, and its first president, J. Smith, became the chief curator of the collections. Designed to become a center for studying the scientific heritage of Linnaeus, it still fulfills this role at the present time.
Thanks to Carl Linnaeus, plant science became one of the most popular in the second half of the 18th century. Linnaeus himself was recognized as "the head of the botanists", although many contemporaries condemned the artificiality of his system. His merit consisted in streamlining the almost chaotic variety of forms of living organisms into a clear and visible system. He described more than 10,000 plant species and 4,400 animal species (including Homo sapiens). Linnaeus's binomial nomenclature remains the basis of modern taxonomy.
The Linnaean names of plants in Species plantarum (Plant Species, 1753) and animals in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae (1758) are legitimate, and both dates are officially recognized as the beginning of modern botanical and zoological nomenclature. The Linnean principle ensured the universality and continuity of the scientific names of plants and animals and ensured the flourishing of taxonomy. Linnaeus's passion for systematics and classification was not limited to plants - he also classified minerals, soils, diseases, human races. He wrote a number of medical works. Unlike scientific works written in Latin, Carl Linnaeus wrote his travel notes in his native language. They are considered a model of this genre in Swedish prose. (A. K. Sytin)
More about Carl Linnaeus:
Carl Linnaeus, the famous Swedish naturalist, was born in Sweden, in the village of Rozgult. He was of an humble family, his ancestors were simple peasants; Father Nile Linneus, was a poor village priest. The year after the birth of his son, he received a more profitable parish in Stenbroghult, where Carl Linnaeus spent his entire childhood up to the age of ten.
My father was a great lover of flowers and gardening; in the picturesque Stenbroghult he planted a garden, which soon became the first in the whole province. This garden and his father's studies, of course, played a significant role in the spiritual development of the future founder of scientific botany. The boy was given a special corner in the garden, several beds, where he was considered a complete master; they were called so - "Karl's garden."
When the boy was ten years old, he was sent to an elementary school in the town of Vexie. The gifted child's schoolwork was going badly; Carl continued to engage in botany with enthusiasm, and the preparation of lessons was tiring for him. The father was about to take the young man from the gymnasium, but the case pushed him into contact with the local doctor Rotman. He was a good friend of the head of the school where Linnaeus began his studies, and from him he knew about the exceptional talents of the boy. At Rotman, the classes of the “underachieving” schoolboy went better. The doctor began to gradually introduce him to medicine and even - contrary to the teachers' reviews - made him fall in love with Latin.
After graduating from high school, Karl enters Lund University, but soon moves from there to one of the most prestigious universities in Sweden - Uppsala. Linnaeus was only 23 years old when the professor of botany Oluas Celsius took him to be his assistant, after which, while still a student, Karl began teaching at the university.
Traveling around Lapland became very important for the young scientist. Carl Linnaeus walked almost 700 kilometers, collected significant collections, and as a result published his first book, Flora of Lapland.
In the spring of 1735 Linnaeus arrived in Holland, to Amsterdam. In the small university town of Garderwick, he passed the exam and on June 24 he defended his dissertation on a medical topic - about fever, which he had written back in Sweden. The immediate goal of his journey was reached, but Charles remained. He remained, fortunately for himself and for science, the rich and highly cultured Holland served as the cradle for his hot creative activity and his resounding fame.
One of his new friends, Dr. Gronov, suggested that he publish some work, then Linnaeus compiled and printed the first draft of his famous work, which laid the foundation for systematic zoology and botany in the modern sense. This was the first edition of his "Systema naturae", containing so far only 14 pages of a huge format, on which they were grouped in the form of tables. short descriptions Minerals, Plants and Animals With this edition, a series of rapid scientific successes of Linnaeus begins.
In his new works, published in 1736-1737, his main and most fruitful ideas were already contained in a more or less finished form - a system of generic and specific names, improved terminology, an artificial system of the plant kingdom.
At this time, he received a brilliant offer to become the personal physician of George Cliffort with a salary of 1000 guilders and a full allowance. Cliffort was one of the directors of the East India Company (which then prospered and filled Holland with wealth) and mayor of the city of Amsterdam. And most importantly, Cliffort was a passionate gardener, a lover of botany and the natural sciences in general. On his estate Garte-kamp, near Harlem, there was a garden famous in Holland, in which, regardless of costs and tirelessly, he was engaged in the cultivation and acclimatization of foreign plants, - plants of Southern Europe, Asia, Africa, America. At the garden, he had both herbariums and a rich botanical library. All this contributed scientific work Linnaeus.
Despite the successes that surrounded Linnaeus in Holland, little by little he began to pull home. In 1738, he returned to his homeland and faced unexpected problems. He, accustomed for three years foreign life to universal respect, friendship and signs of attention of the most prominent and famous people, at home, in his homeland, there was just a doctor without a place, without practice and without money, and no one cared about his learning. So Linnaeus the botanist gave way to Linnaeus the physician, and his favorite activities were abandoned for a while.
However, already in 1739, the Swedish Diet assigned him one hundred ducats of annual maintenance with the obligation to teach botany and mineralogy. At the same time, he was given the title of "royal botanist". In the same year, Carl Linnaeus received the post of admiralty doctor in Stockholm: this position opened up a wide scope for his medical activities.
Finally, K. Linnaeus found an opportunity to marry, and on June 26, 1739, a five-year-delayed wedding took place. Alas, as is often the case with people of outstanding talent, his wife was the exact opposite of her husband. An ill-bred, rude and quarrelsome woman, without intellectual interests, she valued only the material side in the brilliant activity of her husband, she was a housewife, a wife-cook. In economic matters, she held power in the house and in this respect had a bad influence on her husband, developing in him a tendency to avarice. There was a lot of sadness in their relationship in the family. Linnaeus had one son and several daughters, the mother loved her daughters, and they grew up under her influence as uneducated and petty girls of a bourgeois family. To her son, a gifted boy, the mother had a strange antipathy, pursued him in every possible way and tried to turn her father against him. The latter, however, she did not succeed: Linnaeus loved his son and passionately developed in him those inclinations for which he himself suffered so much in childhood.
In a short period of his life in Stockholm, Carl Linnaeus took part in the founding of the Stockholm Academy of Sciences. It arose as a private community of several persons, and its initial number full members there were only six. At its very first meeting, Linnaeus was appointed president by lot.
In 1742, Linnaeus's dream came true and he became a professor of botany at his native university. The botanical department in Uppsala acquired under Linnaeus an extraordinary brilliance, which she never had either before or after. The rest of his life was spent in this city almost without a break. He occupied the department for more than thirty years and left it only shortly before his death.
His financial position becomes strong, Karl is lucky to see the complete triumph of his scientific ideas, the rapid spread and universal recognition of his teachings. The name of Linnaeus was considered among the first names of that time: people like Jean-Jacques Rousseau treated him with respect. External successes and honors rained down on him from all sides. In that age - the age of enlightened absolutism and patrons - scientists were in vogue, and Carl Linnaeus was one of those advanced minds of the last century, on which the courtesies of sovereigns rained down.
The scientist bought himself a small estate near Uppsala Gammarba, where he spent the summer in the last 15 years of his life. Foreigners who came to study under his guidance rented apartments for themselves in a nearby village.
Of course now Carl Linnaeus stopped practicing medicine engaged in scientific research only. He described all medicinal plants known at that time and studied the effect of medicines made from them. It is interesting that these studies, which seemed to fill all his time, Linnaeus successfully combined with others. It was at this time that he invented the thermometer, using the Celsius temperature scale.
But the main business of his life, Linnaeus still considered the systematization of plants. The main work "The System of Plants" took as much as 25 years, and only in 1753 did he publish his main work.
The scientist decided to systematize the entire plant world of the Earth. At the time when Carl Linnaeus began his career, zoology was in a period of exceptional predominance of taxonomy. The task that she then set herself was simply to get acquainted with all the breeds of animals living on the globe, without regard to their internal structure and to the connection of individual forms with each other; the subject of zoological writings of that time was a simple enumeration and description of all known animals.
Thus, zoology and botany of that time were mainly concerned with the study and description of species, but boundless confusion reigned in their recognition. The descriptions that the author gave of new animals or plants were usually so confused and inaccurate. The second main shortcoming of the then science was the lack of a more or less tolerable and accurate classification.
These basic shortcomings of systematic zoology and botany were corrected by the genius of Linnaeus. Remaining on the same ground of the study of nature, on which his predecessors and contemporaries stood, he was a powerful reformer of science. Its merit is purely methodological. He did not discover new areas of knowledge and hitherto unknown laws of nature, but he created a new method, clear, logical, and with the help of it brought light and order to where chaos and confusion reigned before him, which gave a huge impetus to science, paving the way in a powerful way for further research. This was a necessary step in science, without which further progress would not have been possible.
The scientist proposed a binary nomenclature - a system of scientific naming of plants and animals. Based on the structural features, he divided all plants into 24 classes, also highlighting separate genera and species. Each name, in his opinion, should have consisted of two words - generic and specific designations.
Despite the fact that the principle he applied was rather artificial, it turned out to be very convenient and became generally accepted in scientific classification, retaining its significance in our time. But in order for the new nomenclature to be fruitful, it was necessary that the species that received the conditional name, at the same time, be so accurately and in detail described that they could not be confused with other species of the same genus. Carl Linnaeus did this: he was the first to introduce a strictly defined, precise language and a precise definition of features into science. In his work "Fundamental Botany", published in Amsterdam during his life with Cliffort and which was the result of seven years of work, the foundations of the botanical terminology that he used to describe plants are outlined.
The zoological system of Linnaeus did not play such a major role in science as the botanical one, although in some respects it was superior to it, as less artificial, but it did not represent its main advantages of convenience in determining. Linnaeus had little knowledge of anatomy.
The works of Carl Linnaeus gave a huge impetus to the systematic botany of zoology. The developed terminology and convenient nomenclature made it easier to cope with a huge amount of material that had previously been so difficult to understand. Soon all classes of the plant and animal kingdom were systematically studied, and the number of described species increased from hour to hour.
Later, Carl Linnaeus applied his principle to the classification of all nature, in particular, minerals and rocks. He also became the first scientist to classify humans and apes as the same group of animals, the primates. As a result of his observations, the naturalist compiled another book - "The System of Nature". Linnaeus worked on it all his life, from time to time reissuing his work. In total, the scientist prepared 12 editions of this work, which gradually turned from a small book into a voluminous multi-volume publication.
The last years of the life of Carl Linnaeus were overshadowed by senile decrepitude and illness. He died on January 10, 1778, at the age of seventy-one.
After his death, the chair of botany at Uppsala University was given to his son, who zealously set about continuing his father's work. But in 1783 he suddenly fell ill and died at the age of forty-two. The son was not married, and with his death, the lineage of Linnaeus in the male generation ceased.
More about Carl Linnaeus from another source:
Linnaeus (Carolus Linnaeus, from 1762 Carl Linne) - the famous Swedish naturalist, born. in Sweden in Småland (Smaland) in the village of Rosgult (Rashult) in 1707. early childhood Carl Linnaeus showed a great love for nature, this was greatly facilitated by the fact that his father, a village priest, was a lover of flowers and gardening.
Parents prepared Charles for the clergy and sent him to an elementary school in Wexio, where he stayed from 1717 to 1724, but the school did not go well. On the advice of the school authorities, who recognized Karl as incapable, the father wanted to take his son out of school and give him a craft, but his friend, Dr. Rothmann, convinced him to let his son prepare for medicine. Rothmann, with whom Carl Linnaeus settled, began to introduce him to medicine and writings on natural history.
In 1724 - 27, Carl Linnaeus studied at the gymnasium in Veksii, and then entered the university in Lund, but in 1728 he moved to the university in Uppsala to listen to famous professors: Rogberg and Rudbek. His financial situation was extremely difficult, but then he met with support from the learned theologian and botanist Olaus Celsius.
The first article by Carl Linnaeus on the field of plants (handwritten) attracted the attention of Rudbeck, and in 1730, at his suggestion, part of Rudbeck's lectures was transferred to Linnaeus. In 1732, the scientific society in Uppsala commissioned Karl to investigate the nature of Lapland and provided funds for the journey, after which Linnaeus published the first printed work: Florula Lapponica (1732). However, K. Linnaeus, as having no diploma, had to leave Uppsala University.
In 1734, Carl Linnaeus traveled with several young men through Dalecarlia, mainly at the expense of the governor of this province, Reuterholm, and then settled in the city of Falun, lecturing on mineralogy and assay art and practicing medicine. Here he became engaged to the daughter of Dr. Moreus, and partly on his own savings, partly on the funds of his future father-in-law, he went to Holland, where in 1735 he defended his dissertation (on intermittent fever) in the city of Garderwick.
Then Karl Linnaeus settled in Leiden and here he printed the first edition of his "Systema naturae" (1735) with the assistance of Gronov, whom he met in Holland. This work immediately brought him honorable fame and brought him closer to the then famous professor at the University of Leiden, Boerhave, thanks to which Linnaeus received a job as a family doctor and head of the botanical garden in Hartkamp from a rich man, director of the East India Company, Cliffort. This is where Linnaeus settled.
In 1736, he visited London and Oxford, got acquainted with the outstanding English naturalists of that time, with rich collections of the Elephant (Sloane), etc. During his two years of service with Cliffort (1736-1737), Carl Linnaeus published a number of works that brought him great fame in the scientific world and containing the main reforms introduced by Linnaeus into science: "Hortus cliffortianus", "Fundamenta botanica", "Critica botanica", "Genera plantarum" (1737), which was followed by the work "Classes plantarum" (1738).
In 1738, Carl Linnaeus published an essay on ichthyology by his friend Artedi (or Peter Arctadius), who died in Amsterdam. Despite the huge success in Holland, Charles returned to Sweden, visiting Paris. Having settled in Stockholm, at first he was poor, engaged in a meager medical practice, but soon gained fame, began to treat at court and in the houses of dignitaries. In 1739, the Diet allocated him an annual allowance, with the obligation to lecture on botany and mineralogy, and Carl Linnaeus received the title of "royal botanist". In the same year, he received the post of doctor of the Admiralty, which, in addition to material security, gave him the opportunity to study rich clinical material, and at the same time he was allowed to autopsy the corpses of those who died in the naval infirmary.
In Stockholm Carl Linnaeus took part in the founding of the Academy of Sciences(originally a private society) and was its first president. In 1741, he succeeded in obtaining the chair of anatomy and medicine in Uppsala, and the following year he exchanged chairs with Rosen, who two years earlier had taken the chair of botany in Uppsala. In Uppsala, he brought the botanical garden to a brilliant state, founded the Natural History Museum in 1745, published Fauna Suecica in 1746, and Philosophia botanica in 1750.
At the same time, Carl Linnaeus published a number of editions of his "Systema naturae", gradually supplementing, expanding and improving it (2 editions were published in 1740 in Stockholm, 12 and the last - during the life of Linnaeus in 1766 - 68, and after After his death, Gmelin issued a new, partly modified edition in Leipzig in 1788).
The teaching activity of Carl Linnaeus was also a huge success, the number of students at Uppsala University increased from 500 to 1500 thanks to Linnaeus. Scientific research in various countries. Proud of Carl Linnaeus as an outstanding scientific force, the Swedish kings showered him with honors, in 1757 he received the nobility, in which he was approved in 1762 (and his surname was changed to Linne).
Carl Linnaeus received honorable and advantageous offers to Madrid, St. Petersburg (even earlier, in 1741, Albrecht Haller offered him a chair in Göttingen), but rejected them. In 1763 Linnaeus was elected a member of the French Academy. In 1774, he suffered a stroke, and two years later a new one deprived him of the opportunity to continue his activities, and he died in 1778.
In recent years, Karl Linnaeus lived on the estate of Gammarby (Nammarby), passing lectures to his son Karl, who, after his death, took the chair of botany in Uppsala, but died almost at the beginning of his scientific activity, in 1783. Linnaeus's collections and library were sold after his death to England (Smith) by his wife.
Scientific merits of Carl Linnaeus in the highest degree are important. He introduced exact terminology into the descriptions of plants and animals, whereas before him the descriptions were so vague and confused that it was impossible to accurately define animals and plants, and descriptions of new forms more and more confused the matter due to the inability to decide whether a given form was really not has been described previously.
Another important merit of Carl Linnaeus is the introduction of a double nomenclature: each species of Linnaeus is designated by two terms: the name of the genus and the name of the species (for example, a tiger, a leopard, a wild cat belong to the cat genus (Felis) and are designated by the names Felis tigris, Felis pardus, Felis catus). This brief, precise nomenclature replaced the previous descriptions, diagnoses, which denoted individual forms in the absence of exact names for them, and thus eliminated many difficulties.
Carl Linnaeus made its first use in Pan suecicus (1749). At the same time, taking as a starting point in taxonomy the concept of a species (which Linnaeus considered constant), Karl accurately defined the relationship between various systematic groups (class, order, genus, species and variety - before him, these names were used incorrectly and were not used with them). associated with certain representations). At the same time, he gave a new classification for plants, which, although artificial (which Linnaeus himself was aware of), was very convenient for putting in order the accumulated factual material (the scientist indicated in Philosophia botanica the natural groups of plants corresponding to modern families ; in some cases, he even retreated from his system, not wanting to violate the natural relationships of known species).
Carl Linnaeus divided the animal kingdom into 6 classes: mammals, birds, reptiles (= modern reptiles + amphibians), fish, insects (= modern type of arthropods) and worms. The most unfortunate is the last group, which combines representatives of the most diverse groups. The Linnaean system also includes some improvements compared to the previous ones (for example, cetaceans are classified as mammals). But, although in his classification he kept mainly external signs, his division into main groups is based on anatomical facts.
Carrying out these reforms in systematics, Linnaeus put in order all the factual material on botany and zoology that had accumulated before him and was in a chaotic state, and thereby greatly contributed to the further growth of scientific knowledge.
Carl Linnaeus - quotes
In natural science, principles must be confirmed by observation. 
The eternal, infinite, omniscient and omnipotent God passed me by. I did not see Him face to face, but the reflection of the Deity filled my soul with silent wonder. I saw the trace of God in His creation; and everywhere, even in the smallest and most imperceptible of His works, what a power, what a wisdom, what an inexpressible perfection! I observed how animated beings, standing on the highest level, are connected with the kingdom of plants, and plants, in turn, with the minerals that are in the depths the globe, and how the globe itself gravitates towards the sun and revolves around it in an unchanged order, receiving life from it. The system of nature.
Nature does not make a leap.
With the help of art, nature creates miracles.
Minerals exist, plants live and grow, animals live, grow and feel.
