60 Fun Facts About Carl Linnaeus

Which country was Carl Linnaeus born in?

He was born in 1707 in Råshult, a village in Småland in the south of the country. He later became a professor at Uppsala.

Which naming system did Linnaeus formalise for organisms?

Each species gets a two-part Latin name, genus plus species, such as Homo sapiens. The system replaced long descriptive Latin phrases.

Linnaeus is popularly known as the father of which discipline?

His hierarchical scheme of kingdoms, classes, orders, genera and species is the ancestor of the classification biologists use today.

What name did Linnaeus take after his ennoblement in 1761?

'Linné' was a shortened, gallicised form of Linnæus, with the German nobiliary particle 'von' added to mark his new rank.

What abbreviation marks Linnaeus as the authority for a plant name?

A single letter is enough because no other botanist gets one; in zoology his full surname is more common, and older works use 'Linn.'

Which species is Linnaeus himself designated the type specimen of?

In 1959 W. T. Stearn made him the lectotype of our own species, since the only specimen he was known to have examined was himself.

What was the profession of Linnaeus's father, Nils?

Nils was an amateur botanist as well as a clergyman, and gave the boy his own patch of garden to grow plants in.

The family surname Linnæus honours which kind of plant?

Nils needed a surname to enrol at Lund University and Latinised lind, the Swedish for the giant tree on the family homestead.

When Linnaeus neglected school, what trade did his father consider apprenticing him to?

His headmaster noticed the boy's interest in botany and instead introduced him to the doctor Johan Rothman, who steered him toward medicine.

At which university did Linnaeus first enrol, in 1727?

He moved to Uppsala a year later on Rothman's advice, because its medical faculty was better suited to studying both medicine and botany.

How large an audience did Linnaeus's early Uppsala botany lectures often draw?

He was only a second-year student when Olof Rudbeck the Younger picked him to lecture in May 1730.

On what feature did Linnaeus base his new plant classification system?

His 'sexual system' sorted plants by their reproductive parts, replacing Tournefort's method he had been taught.

Which region did Linnaeus explore on his six-month expedition of 1732?

He set off from Uppsala just before his 25th birthday and covered more than 2,000 km, describing about 100 previously unidentified plants.

Which plant, found near Gävle, became Linnaeus's favourite?

Later named Linnaea borealis in his honour, it also appears prominently on his noble coat of arms.

Which Indigenous people did Linnaeus study on his 1732 northern journey?

He also studied lichens, a main part of the diet of the reindeer that the herders depended on.

Which book grew out of Linnaeus's 1732 northern expedition?

It covered 534 species and has been called the first proto-modern Flora, mixing botany with notes on local culture.

In which city did Linnaeus expose a taxidermied seven-headed hydra as a fake?

The mayor's prized specimen was stitched from weasel jaws and snake skins, and Linnaeus and his companion had to flee the city.

At which Dutch university did Linnaeus earn his medical doctorate in 1735?

The university was known for granting degrees in as little as a week; Linnaeus finished his oral and practical exams within two weeks.

Which disease did Linnaeus's doctoral dissertation link to clay-rich soils?

He missed the mosquito, but correctly predicted that Artemisia annua would become a source of treatments for the disease.

How did Linnaeus's friend Peter Artedi die in 1735?

The two had promised that the survivor would finish the other's work; Artedi left an unfinished manuscript on classifying fish.

In what year was the first edition of Systema Naturae published?

The first edition was a mere twelve pages, printed in the Netherlands with money from Gronovius and the Scottish doctor Isaac Lawson.

How many pages long was the first edition of Systema Naturae?

By its 10th edition in 1758 the work classified 4,400 animal species and 7,700 plant species.

For whom did Linnaeus work as physician and garden superintendent at Hartekamp?

His employer was a director of the Dutch East India Company; Linnaeus called his years there 'the happiest time of my life'.

Which London site did Linnaeus visit in 1736 to meet its keeper Philip Miller?

Miller was slow to adopt the new system and only fully switched his Gardeners Dictionary to Linnaean names in 1768.

Which pitcher-plant genus was first named in Hortus Cliffortianus?

The book catalogued Clifford's holdings; Linnaeus wrote it in nine months but it was not published until 1738.

After returning home in 1738, how often did Linnaeus travel abroad again?

His system spread worldwide instead through his students, the so-called apostles, who travelled on his behalf.

Which learned society did Linnaeus help found while working in Stockholm?

He became its first president, or Praeses, by the drawing of lots.

What was the name of Linnaeus's wife?

They became engaged in Falun in 1738 and married in June 1739, once his finances as a physician could support a family.

Which temperature scale did Linnaeus invert to its modern form in 1745?

Anders Celsius originally set water boiling at 0 degrees and freezing at 100; Linnaeus flipped it the way we use it today.

What did Linnaeus call his most promising students who travelled the world?

There were 17 of them, and seven died on their expeditions, including the first, the pastor Christopher Tärnström.

Which apostle sailed with James Cook and Joseph Banks on the Endeavour?

Linnaeus was so fond of him he had promised him his eldest daughter's hand in marriage.

Which apostle studied Japan's flora from the tiny island of Dejima?

Foreigners were barred from Japan, so he persuaded translators to bring him plants; he returned to Sweden a year after Linnaeus died.

Which apostle spent two and a half years collecting plants in North America?

At least 90 of the 700 North American species in Species Plantarum came from his collections.

Which 1753 work is the starting point of modern botanical nomenclature?

The two volumes ran to 1,200 pages and described more than 7,300 species.

Which edition of Systema Naturae is the starting point of zoological nomenclature?

Released in 1758, it also introduced the terms Mammalia and Primates and gave humans the binomial Homo sapiens.

Which honour did Linnaeus receive in 1753 as its first civilian knight?

He was reportedly seldom seen without the order's insignia afterwards.

What object sits at the centre of Linnaeus's noble coat of arms?

The shield is split into red, black and green for the animal, mineral and vegetable kingdoms; the egg denotes nature perpetuated 'in ovo'.

Which Roman epic supplied Linnaeus's motto 'Famam extendere factis'?

The phrase means 'we extend our fame by our deeds', and he inscribed it in books friends gave him.

Which class name did Linnaeus coin, possibly influenced by his campaign for breast-feeding?

He campaigned against wet nurses and even suggested babies could absorb a nurse's personality through her milk.

Under what heading did Linnaeus first group humans together with apes?

Critics objected that it was illogical to call man 'manlike'; he replied he knew of no generic difference between man and simian.

How many kingdoms did Linnaeus's original system divide nature into?

Animal, vegetable and mineral. Modern taxonomy later inserted family and phylum, ranks his scheme lacked.

Which everyday office invention did Linnaeus need to track his classifications?

By the 12th edition of Systema Naturae the flood of specimens from around the world had outgrown bound notebooks.

What did Linnaeus popularise to denote male and female within species?

The astrological signs for the two planets became the standard gender symbols still used in biology today.

Who bought Linnaeus's entire collection from his widow in 1784?

The 24-year-old medical student paid for 14,000 plants, 3,198 insects and 1,600 books, and founded the Linnean Society of London five years later.

Where was Linnaeus buried in January 1778?

He had wanted to be buried at his beloved farm at Hammarby, where he died, but was interred in the cathedral instead.

Which southern province was Linnaeus commissioned to survey in 1749?

He was also told to find the best places to grow walnut and whitebeam, which the army used for rifle stocks; the diary ran to 561 pages.

Which philosopher wrote of Linnaeus, 'I know no greater man on Earth'?

Goethe said only Shakespeare and Spinoza had influenced him more, and Strindberg called Linnaeus a poet who happened to become a naturalist.

Which Småland state doctor took the teenage Linnaeus into his home and taught him botany and physiology?

Rothman alone among Linnaeus's teachers believed the boy had a future, suggesting medicine over the priesthood.

How did Linnaeus describe his childhood tutor Johan Telander in his autobiography?

Telander, a yeoman's son, was hired when Linnaeus was seven.

How many previously unrecorded plants did Linnaeus and his students find on their 1741 Öland and Gotland trip?

He set out just ten days after being appointed professor, and wrote the trip up in Swedish.

Which two companion books, one botanical and one zoological, did Linnaeus publish in summer 1745?

That same year he flipped Celsius's temperature scale to put freezing at 0 and boiling at 100.

What title, meaning chief physician, did King Adolf Frederick grant Linnaeus in 1747?

The same year he was elected to the Academy of Sciences in Berlin.

On which day of the week did Linnaeus lead his hugely popular summer botanical excursions around Uppsala?

He became rector in 1750 and told students to think for themselves and trust nobody, not even him.

What did Linnaeus's 1752 dissertation Nutrix Noverca campaign against?

He suggested babies might absorb a wet nurse's personality through her milk and praised Sami childcare.

How did Linnaeus's first 'apostle', pastor Christopher Tärnström, die in 1746?

His widow blamed Linnaeus, who thereafter preferred to send young unmarried students abroad.

At least how many of the 700 North American species in Species Plantarum were brought back by Pehr Kalm?

Kalm, the second apostle, spent two and a half years in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Canada.

How old was James Edward Smith when he bought Linnaeus's entire collection in 1784?

The medical student's haul included 14,000 plants and 3,198 insects; he founded the Linnean Society five years later.

Which part of Linnaeus's private collection stayed behind in Sweden and was later lost?

In London, Smith neglected the zoological material and later scientists disturbed the original labels.

Which older economic doctrine, alongside Enlightenment utilitarianism, shaped Linnaeus's applied science?

He backed tariffs, quotas, wage ceilings and state-licensed monopolies.

Which two Swedish institutions merged on 1 January 2010 to take Linnaeus's name?

The Linnean Society of London has awarded the Linnean Medal since 1888.