Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), Father of biological systematic and nomenclature

Carl Linnaeus was born in Roeshult, Sweden, in May 2, 1707. He was the son of a Swedish pastor who at an early age showed a consuming interest in botany with disastrous results for his school work. At the University of Uppsala he studied botany which 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 addition 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. He became Professor of Medicine in 1741 and soon exchanged this position for Professor of Botany.

Carl Linnaeus is best known for establishing binomial nomenclature, or the genus and species system of naming, as the standard means of organizing the biological world into a scientific taxonomy.

He established the binomial system of nomenclature, which made possible the modern classification of insects and other organisms. His work for the first time provided literally a system of nature a logical way to order the creatures of the world, which was received with tremendous enthusiasm by the numerous amateur collectors who were accumulating specimens.

Linnaeus’ publication “Systema Naturae” 10th edition in 1758 is considered the starting point for naming insects.
Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), Father of biological systematic and nomenclature