Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish physiologist, was a professor of medicine at the University of Uppsala. He was in charge of a large botanical garden, which was needed by the university for scientific research. People sent him plants and seeds from all over the world to grow in the botanical garden. It was thanks to the intensive study of this huge collection of plants that Carl Linnaeus was able to solve the problem of systematizing all living things - today it would be called the task of taxonomy (taxonomy). It can be said that he came up with the categories for the Twenty Questions quiz, popular in America, in which the first thing they ask is whether an object is an animal, plant, or mineral. In the Linnaean system, indeed, everything refers either to animals, or to plants, or to inanimate nature (minerals).

To help you understand the principle of systematization, imagine that you want to classify all the houses in the world. You can start by saying that houses in Europe, for example, are more similar to each other than houses in North America, so at the first, crudest level of classification, you need to specify the continent where the building is located. At the level of each continent, one can go further by noting that houses in one country (eg France) are more similar to each other than houses in another country (eg Norway). Thus, the second level of classification will be the country. We can continue in the same way, considering successively the level of the country, the level of the city and the level of the street. The number of the house on a particular street will be the final cell where you can place the desired object. This means that each house will be fully classified if the continent, country, city, street and house number are indicated for it.

Linnaeus noticed that in a similar way it is possible to classify living beings according to their characteristics. Man, for example, is more like a squirrel than a rattlesnake, and more like a rattlesnake than a pine tree. By following the same reasoning as in the case of houses, a classification system can be constructed in which each living creature will receive its unique place.

This is exactly what the followers of Carl Linnaeus did. On the entry level all living beings are divided into five kingdoms - plants, animals, fungi and two kingdoms of unicellular organisms (non-nuclear and containing DNA in the nucleus). Further, each kingdom is divided into types. For example, in nervous system a person enters a long spinal brain, formed from a chord. This puts us in the phylum chordates. In most animals that have a spinal cord, it is located inside the spine. This large group of chordates is called the vertebrate subphylum. The person belongs to this subtype. The presence of a spine is a criterion by which vertebrate animals differ from invertebrates, that is, those that do not have a spine (these include, for example, crabs).

The next category of classification is class. Man is a representative of the class of mammals - warm-blooded animals with wool, viviparous and feeding their young with milk. This level distinguishes between man and animals such as reptiles and birds. The next category is the squad. We belong to the order of primates - animals with binocular vision and arms and legs adapted for grasping. The classification of humans as primates distinguishes us from other mammals, such as dogs and giraffes.

The next two classification categories are family and genus. We belong to the hominin family and the genus Homo. However, this distinction means little to us, since there are no other representatives of our family and our kind (although they existed in the past). In most animals, each genus contains several representatives. For example, the polar bear is Ursus maritimis and the grizzly bear is Ursus horibilis. Both of these bears belong to the same genus (Ursus), but to different species - they do not interbreed.
The last category in Linnaeus' classification, species, is usually defined as a population of individuals that can interbreed. Man belongs to the species sapience.

When describing animals, it is customary to indicate the genus and species. Therefore, a person is classified as Homo sapiens ("A reasonable person"). This does not mean that the other categories of classification are unimportant - they are simply implied when speaking of genus and species. The main contribution of Linnaeus to science is that he applied and introduced the so-called binary nomenclature, according to which each object of classification is designated by two Latin names - generic and specific.

Classifying in this way wildlife, the Linnaean system assigns to each organism its own unique place in the world of living beings. But success depends primarily on how correctly the taxonomist identifies important physical characteristics, and incorrect judgments and even mistakes are possible here - Linnaeus, for example, attributed the hippopotamus to the order of rodents! At present, when systematizing, more and more is taken into account genetic code individual organisms or the history of their evolution - a family tree (this approach is called cladistics).

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 the flower, as well as the sign of one-, two- or polyeciousness 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:

1. mammals
2. Birds
3. Amphibians
4. Fish
5. Worms
6. 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 on 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.

CARL LINNEUS

Carl Linnaeus, the famous Swedish naturalist, was born in Sweden, in the village of Rozgult, on May 23, 1707. He was of an humble family, his ancestors were simple peasants; father, Nils Linneus, was a poor country priest. The year after the birth of his son, he received a more profitable parish in Stenbroghult, where Carl Linnaeus spent his entire childhood until 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 primary school in the town of Vexiyo. The gifted child's schoolwork was going badly; he 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 Olof Celsius took him to be his assistant, after which he himself, while still a student. Carl began teaching at the university. The journey through Lapland became very important for the young scientist. 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, in 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 wrote 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 ardent 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 only 14 huge pages for the time being, on which brief descriptions of minerals, plants and animals were grouped in the form of tables. 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, artificial system vegetable 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. In his estate Gartekampe, 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 to the scientific work of 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 of living abroad 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 scholarship. 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, he received a position as Admiralty doctor in Stockholm: this position opened up a wide scope for his medical activities.

Finally, he 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-mannered, 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 cook wife. 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, Linnaeus took part in the founding of the Stockholm Academy of Sciences. It originated as a private community of several persons, and the original number of its actual members was only six. At its 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; he has the good fortune 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 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 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 Gammarba near Uppsala, 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 Linnaeus stopped practicing medicine, he was only engaged in scientific research. 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 Linnaeus began his work, zoology was in a period of exceptional predominance of systematics. 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 inconsistent 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 applied by him 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. Linnaeus did just that: 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 even higher than it, as less artificial, but it did not represent its main advantages - convenience in determining. Linnaeus had little knowledge of anatomy.

The works of 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, 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, primates. As a result of his observations, the naturalist compiled another book - "The System of Nature". He worked on it all his life, from time to time republishing 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.

Last years Linnaeus's life was 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.

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Linnaeus (1707–1778) The famous Swedish naturalist Carl von Linnaeus, who created the most successful system of classification of flora and fauna, the author of The System of Nature and the Philosophy of Botany, was a physician by education and was engaged in healing. Karl Linnaeus

From the book 3333 tricky questions and answers author Kondrashov Anatoly Pavlovich

CARL LINNEUS (1707–1778) Carl Linnaeus, the famous Swedish naturalist, was born in Sweden, in the village of Rozgult, on May 23, 1707. He was of an humble family, his ancestors were simple peasants; father, Nils Linneus, was a poor country priest. The year after birth

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Why are many of the plants that Linnaeus considered Siberian not found in Siberia? The creator of the system of flora and fauna, the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), being the largest specialist in the field of biology and medicine, knew very little

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LINNEUS, Carl (Linn?, Carl von, 1707–1778), Swedish naturalist 529 Minerals exist, plants live and grow, animals live, grow and feel. // Mineralia sunt, vegetabilia vivunt et crescunt, animalia vivunt, crescunt et sentiunt. Attributed. ? Luppol I. K. Diderot, ses idées philosophiques. – Paris, 1936, p. 271; Babkin, 2:115. Probable

From the author's book

CARL X (Charles Philippe de Bourbon, Count of Artois) (Charles X (Charles Philippe de Bourbon, comte d'Artois), 1757–1836), brother of Louis XVI and Louis XVIII, leader of royalist emigrants, King of France in 1824–1830 .47 Nothing has changed in France, only one more Frenchman has become. The words of Count Artois (the future Charles

Systematics is the science necessary to establish order in the diverse world of wildlife. Without a simple, understandable, and also well-organized system, it is impossible for scientists to easily understand each other. Nevertheless, the science of systematics was formed over several centuries.

The history of the emergence of taxonomy

Which scientist is considered the founder of taxonomy? Konrad Gesner, who lived in the 16th century, was one of the first to try to systematize known living organisms. Later, the British, Italians and Dutch used and improved, and also introduced their own kind of system of the world of wildlife. The Englishman John Ray in the 17th century proposed to streamline numerous organisms, using knowledge of the differences and similarities between them. This proposal was a significant step forward in the development of biology.

Nevertheless, Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish naturalist, is recognized as the founder of systematics.

It was he who proposed binary nomenclature instead of the long names of animal and plant species. Carl Linnaeus is the founder of modern taxonomy, the very one that is currently used throughout the world. It has not become obsolete due to its simplicity and ease of use.

Biography of Carl Linnaeus

The founder of systematics was born in a Swedish village in the family of a priest in 1707. He became interested in the plant world as a child. However, after graduating from high school, on the advice of a teacher, he entered the medical department of the university. As a result, the founder of taxonomy became a doctor of medical sciences. He used his knowledge as a doctor throughout his life. He treated people using herbs, which he was well versed in, as he was fond of botany since childhood.

Carl Linnaeus visited Lapland, different parts of his native country, on the islands of the Baltic Sea. Everywhere the founder of taxonomy was engaged in the study of plants and their distribution according to

Binary nomenclature

The species is the basic unit of taxonomy in biology. Organisms of the same species interbreed and produce full-fledged offspring. It was Carl Linnaeus who came up with how to designate species names. The founder of systematics described each type of organism in two words: the first word is the name of the genus (higher taxon), and the second is the species name itself. In this case, there is minimal confusion in concepts, because there are still much fewer genera in biology than species.

Moreover, Carl Linnaeus attributed each species of organism to taxonomic groups of a different hierarchy. He used order, genus and species. Hierarchy in biology allows you to bring full order in a huge number of representatives of wildlife. For example, the rock dove belongs to the genus of pigeons, the family of pigeons, the order of pigeon-like, and the class of birds.

The taxonomy of Carl Linnaeus is presented on Latin. In it, each species has a specific, unique name for it. For example, the wolf is Canis lupus. The genus Canis, which means "wolf", includes different types wolves, including jackals. The species name (Canis lupus) includes only individuals capable of producing full-fledged offspring. Around the world, the common wolf has formed about 37 subspecies: red dog, wild dog dingo and many others.

A little later, a slight confusion arose that the same species can have several specific names in Latin: either the generic name or the specific word changes. This is due to the work of various scientists or the fact that experts have not determined to which specific genus the representative of the world of wildlife belongs.

The great work of Carl Linnaeus

The founder of taxonomy determined the place of man in wildlife. He described himself as Homo sapiens and attributed the species of humans to primates. The description is given in the author's work "The System of Nature".

The same work describes the division of the natural world into animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms.

Thus, it is Carl Linnaeus that scientists consider the founder of modern taxonomy, because he did the greatest work in establishing the principles for the classification of living organisms. These principles are still in use today. Binary nomenclature and hierarchy in taxonomy have proven to be practical to use.

Carl Linnaeus

Karl Linnaeus (1707-1778), Swedish naturalist, creator of the system of flora and fauna, the first president of the Swedish Academy of Sciences (since 1739), 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 approx. 1500 plant species. He advocated the permanence of species and creationism. Author of "The System of Nature" (1735), "Philosophy of Botany" (1751), etc.

Linnaeus Karl (1707-78) - Swedish naturalist, formulated the foundations of plant systematics, the creation of which is his main scientific merit. Despite the fact that this system was artificial, the binomial principle of naming introduced by Linnaeus retained its significance and became generally accepted. Being a supporter creationism, Linnaeus also suggested a hybrid origin of some forms and allowed limited variability of species under the influence of the conditions of their existence.

Philosophical Dictionary. Ed. I.T. Frolova. M., 1991, p. 222.

Linnaeus (Linne, Linnaeus), Karl (1707-1778) - Swedish naturalist and naturalist. Born in Roskhult. Educated at Uppsala University. From 1741 until the end of his life he taught a number of biological and medical disciplines and headed the department at this university. Botany was at the center of Linnaeus's scientific interests, but he dealt with a wide range of natural science issues - zoology, mining and mineralogy, medicine, etc. Linnaeus's main merit was the creation of classification systems for plants and animals. The first presentation of it is presented by Linnaeus in the book "The System of Nature".

Philosophical Dictionary / ed.-comp. S. Ya. Podoprigora, A. S. Podoprigora. - Ed. 2nd, sr. - Rostov n / a: Phoenix, 2013, p. 193.

famous naturalist

Carl Linnaeus, the famous naturalist, was born in Sweden, in the village of Rozgult, on May 13, 1707. He was of an humble family, his ancestors were simple peasants; father, Nile Linneus, was a village priest. 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.

At the end of the gymnasium, Karl enters Lund University, but soon moves from there to one of the most prestigious universities in Sweden - Uppsala.

June 24, 1735 at the university campus of Garderwick, in Holland Linnaeus passed the exam and defended a dissertation on a medical topic - about fever, which he wrote back in Sweden. At the same time, Linnaeus compiled and printed the first draft of his work, which laid the foundation for systematic zoology. This was the first edition of his Systema naturae. 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 an offer to become the personal physician of George Cliffort with a salary of 1000 guilders and a full allowance. Clifffort was one of the directors of the East India Company and mayor of Amsterdam. He was an avid gardener and botanist. In his estate there was a garden famous in Holland, in which he cultivated and acclimatized plants from Southern Europe, Asia, Africa, and America.

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". Linnaeus took part in the founding of the Stockholm Academy of Sciences and was its first president. In 1742, Linnaeus became professor of botany at his native university. The scientist bought himself a small estate near Uppsala Gammarba, where he spent the summer in the last 15 years of his life. He described all medicinal plants known at that time and studied the effect of medicines made from them. It was at this time that he invented the thermometer, using the Celsius temperature scale.

The main work "The System of Plants" took as much as 25 years, and only in 1753 did Linnaeus publish his main work.

At the time when Linnaeus began his work, zoology was in a period of exceptional predominance of systematics. The task that she then set herself was 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 descriptions that the author gave of new animals or plants were usually inaccurate. The second main shortcoming of the then science was the lack of classification.

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 had to consist of two words - generic and specific designations.

Linnaeus 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 in describing plants are outlined.

The last years of Linnaeus's life were overshadowed by senility and illness. He died on January 10, 1778, at the age of seventy-one.

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Swedish naturalist

LINNEUS, CARL (Linnaeus, Carolus, also Linn, Carl von) (1707–1778), Swedish naturalist, "father of modern botanical systematics" and creator of modern biological nomenclature. Born May 23, 1707 in Roshult in the province of Småland in the family of a village pastor. His parents wanted Karl to become a clergyman, but from his youth he was fascinated by natural history, especially botany. These studies were encouraged by a local doctor, who advised Linnaeus to choose the profession of a physician, since at that time botany was considered part of pharmacology. In 1727, Linnaeus entered Lund University, and the following year he moved to Uppsala University, where the teaching of botany and medicine was better. In Uppsala, he lived and worked with Olaf Celsius, a theologian and amateur botanist who contributed to the preparation of the book Biblical Botany (Hierobotanicum), a list of plants mentioned in the Bible. In 1729, as a New Year's gift to Celsius, Linnaeus wrote an essay Introduction to Plant Engagements (Praeludia sponsalorum plantarun), in which he poetically described their sexual process. This work not only delighted Celsius, but also aroused the interest of teachers and students of the university. She predetermined the main range of future interests of Linnaeus - the classification of plants according to their reproductive organs. In 1731, having defended his dissertation, Linnaeus became an assistant to professor of botany O. Rudbek. The following year he traveled to Lapland. For three months he wandered around this then wild country, collecting plant samples. The Uppsala Scientific Society, which sponsored this work, published only a brief report on it - Flora Lapponica. Linnaeus's detailed work on the plants of Lapland was published only in 1737, and his vividly written diary of the expedition Lapland life (Lachesis Lapponica) was published after the author's death in Latin translation. In 1733–1734, Linnaeus lectured and conducted scientific work at the university, wrote a number of books and articles. However, continuing a medical career traditionally required a degree abroad. In 1735 he entered the University of Harderwijk in Holland, where he soon received a doctorate in medicine. In Holland, he became close to the famous Leiden physician G. Boerhaave, who recommended Linnaeus to the mayor of Amsterdam, Georg Kliffort, a passionate gardener who by that time had collected a magnificent collection of exotic plants. Cliffort made Linnaeus his personal physician and instructed him to identify and classify the specimens he bred. The result was the excellent treatise Cliffort's Garden (Hortus Clifortianus), published in 1737.

In 1736-1738, the first editions of many of Linnaeus's works were published in Holland: in 1736 - the System of Nature (Systema naturae), the Botanical Library (Bibliotheca botanica) and the Fundamentals of Botany (Fundamenta botanica); in 1737 - Criticism of botany (Critica botanica), Genera of plants (Genera plantarum), Flora of Lapland (Flora Lapponica) and Clifffort Garden (Hortus Cliffortianus); in 1738 - Plant classes (Classes plantarum), Collection of genera (Corollarium generum) and Sexual method (Methodus sexualist). In addition, in 1738 Linnaeus edited a book on fish Ichthyologia (Ichthyologia), which remained unfinished after the death of his friend Peter Artedi. Botanical works, especially plant genera, formed the basis of modern plant taxonomy. In them, Linnaeus described and applied new system classification, which greatly simplifies the definition of organisms. In his method, which he called "sexual", the main emphasis was on the structure and number of reproductive structures of plants, i.e. stamens (male organs) and pistils (female organs). Although the Linnaean classification is largely artificial, it was so convenient to all the systems that existed at that time that it soon gained general acceptance. Its rules were formulated so simply and clearly that they seemed to be the laws of nature, and Linnaeus himself, of course, considered them as such. However, his views on the sexual process in plants, although not original, found their critics: some accused Linnaeus of immorality, others of excessive anthropomorphism.

An even more daring work than botanical works was the famous System of Nature. Its first edition of about a dozen printed sheets, which was a general outline of the planned book, was an attempt to classify all the creations of nature - animals, plants and minerals - into classes, orders, genera and species, and also to establish rules for their identification. Corrected and enlarged editions of this treatise appeared 12 times during Linnaeus's lifetime and were reprinted several times after his death.

In 1738 Linnaeus, on behalf of Cliffort, visited the botanical centers of England. By that time, he had already earned international recognition among naturalists and received invitations to work in Holland and Germany. However, Linnaeus chose to return to Sweden. In 1739 he opened a medical practice in Stockholm and continued to study natural history. In 1741 he was appointed professor of medicine at Uppsala University, and in 1742 he also became a professor of botany there. In the following years, he mainly taught and wrote scientific works, but at the same time he made several scientific expeditions to little-studied areas of Sweden and published a report on each of them. Linnaeus's enthusiasm, his fame, and, most importantly, his ability to infect others with the desire to search for something new attracted many followers to him. He collected a huge herbarium and a collection of plants. Collectors from all over the world sent him specimens of unknown forms of life, and he described their findings in his books.

In 1745 Linnaeus publishes Flora of Sweden (Flora Suecica), in 1746 - Fauna of Sweden (Fauna Suecica), in 1748 - Uppsala Garden (Hortus Upsaliensis). In Sweden and abroad, more and more editions of the System of Nature continue to appear. Some of them, especially the sixth (1748), the tenth (1758) and the twelfth (1766), substantially supplemented the previous ones. The famous 10th and 12th editions became multi-volume encyclopedias, not only an attempt to classify natural objects, but also giving brief descriptions, i.e. features, all species of animals, plants and minerals known by that time. An article about each species was supplemented with information about its geographical distribution, habitat, behavior and varieties. The 12th edition was the most complete, but the 10th became the most important. It was from the moment of its publication that the priority of modern zoological nomenclature was established, because it was in this book that Linnaeus first gave double (binary, or binomial) names to all animal species known to him. In 1753 he completed his great work Types of Plants (Species plantarum); it contained descriptions and binary names of all plant species that determined modern botanical nomenclature. In the book Philosophy of Botany (Philosophia botanica), published in 1751, Linnaeus aphoristically outlined the principles that guided him in the study of plants. The German writer, thinker and naturalist Goethe admitted: "Apart from Shakespeare and Spinoza, Linnaeus had the strongest influence on me."

The meaning of Linnaeus and the binary system of biological nomenclature. Linnaeus is the author of over 180 books and numerous articles, mainly on natural history and medicine. For his contemporaries highest value had lists, classifications and descriptions of plants and animals known at that time. He systematized the scattered and often contradictory data of earlier authors and himself described a large number of new species. His publications stimulated further research, as they enabled scientists to clearly distinguish between the known and the unknown.

Modern naturalists see in Linnaeus, first of all, the founder of the binary system of scientific nomenclature, recognized today throughout the world. The binary system assumes that each species of plants and animals has a unique scientific name belonging only to it (binomen), consisting of only two words (Latin or Latinized). The first of them is a generic name - common for a whole group of closely related species that make up one biological genus. The second, the specific epithet, is an adjective or noun (in the genitive case or in the application function) that refers to only one species of a given genus. Thus, the lion and tiger included in the genus "cats" (Felis) are called Felis leo and Felis tigris, respectively, and the wolf from the genus dog (Canis) is called Canis lupus. The simplicity and clarity of such a system, which simultaneously determines the kinship and species uniqueness of organisms, together with the authority of Linnaeus himself, a recognized specialist in the identification of living forms, led to the universal recognition of the binary names he proposed. In fairness, it should be recognized that they were used before by some other authors, but not systematically. Although Linnaeus included many of them in his writings, the species names in his Species of Plants (1753) and System of Nature (1758) are considered precisely "Linnean", since in these books the binary system first found its consistent embodiment.

It is curious that Linnaeus himself did not attach much importance to the binary system. He emphasized the polynomial, i.e. verbose name-description, and the corresponding binomen himself considered a simple name (nomen trivialis), which has no scientific value and only facilitates the memorization of the species.

The Linnean classification system was subsequently radically revised, but its basic principles were preserved. His ideas about the taxonomic relationships of organisms are far from modern, since they are based on very limited factual data and outdated philosophical concepts. He proposed his classification long before the advent of Darwin's theory of evolution, which established that biological systematics should reflect the consistent origin of various forms of living things from common ancestors. Comparative anatomy and morphology in the 18th century. were just emerging, paleontology as a science did not exist, and no one even thought about genetics. However, the classification by Linnaeus of the facts accumulated by his time became the foundation on which the building of modern biology grew.

Materials of the encyclopedia "The World Around Us" are used

Literature:

Linnaeus K. The system of nature. The Animal Kingdom, ch. 1–2. St. Petersburg, 1804–1805

Bobrov E.G. Carl Linnaeus, 1707-1778. L., 1970

Linnaeus K. Philosophy of Botany. M., 1989

Carl Linnaeus

(1707-1778)

Carl Linnaeus, the famous Swedish naturalist, was born in Sweden on May 13, 1707. He was of an humble family, his ancestors were simple peasants; father was a poor country priest. The year after the birth of his son, he received a more profitable parish in Stenbroghult, the year and the whole childhood of Carl Linnaeus passed until the age of ten.

When the boy was 10 years old, he was sent to an elementary school in the city of Vexie. The gifted child's schoolwork was going badly; he continued to engage in botany with enthusiasm, and the preparation of lessons was tiring for him. The father was going to take the young man from the gymnasium, but the case pushed him into contact with the local doctor Rotman. At Rotman, the classes of the “underachieving” gymnasium 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 Celzky took him as his assistant, after which, while still a student, Karl began teaching at the university. The journey through Lapland became very important for the young scientist. 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, in Amsterdam. In the small university town of Gardquick, he passed the exam and on June 24 he defended his dissertation on a medical topic - about fever. 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 ardent 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 only 14 pages of a huge format, on which brief descriptions of minerals, plants and animals were grouped in the form of tables. 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.

Despite the successes that surrounded Linnaeus in Holland, little by little he began to pull home. In 1738, he returns to his homeland and encounters unexpected problems. He, accustomed for three years of living abroad to universal respect, friendship and signs of attention of the most prominent and famous people, at home, in his homeland, was just a doctor without a job, without practice and without money, and no one cared about his scholarship . So Linnaeus the botanist gave way to Linnaeus the doctor, and his favorite activities were stopped for a while.

However, already in 1739, the Swedish Diet assigned him one hundred lukats of annual maintenance with the obligation to teach botany and mineralogy.

Finally, he found an opportunity to marry, and on June 26, 1739, a five-year-delayed wedding took place. Alas, as is often the case, his wife was the exact opposite of her husband. An ill-mannered, rude and quarrelsome woman, without intellectual interests, who was only interested in the financial aspects of her husband. 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. But Linnaeus loved his son and passionately developed in him those inclinations for which he himself suffered so much in childhood.

In 1742, Linnaeus's dream came true and he became a professor of botany at his native university. 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.

Now Linnaeus ceased to engage in medical practice, was engaged only in scientific research. He described all medicinal plants known at that time and studied the effect of medicines made from them.

During this time, 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 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 Liney 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 inconsistent and inaccurate. The second main shortcoming of the then science was the lack of a more or less basic and precise 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 methodical. 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, he brought light and order to where chaos and confusion reigned before him, which gave a huge impetus to science, paving the way for further research in a powerful way. This was a necessary step in science, without which further progress would not have been possible.

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 stood above it, as less artificial, but it did not represent its main advantages - convenience in determining. Linnaeus had little knowledge of anatomy.

Linnaeus' work gave a huge impetus to systematic botany and 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.

Linnaeus later 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, primates. As a result of his observations, the naturalist compiled another book - "The System of Nature". He worked on it all his life, from time to time republishing his work. In total, the scientist prepared 12 editions of this work, which gradually turned from a small book into a voluminous multi-volume edition.

The last years of Linnaeus's life were overshadowed by senility and illness. He died on January 10, 1778, at the age of seventy-one.