Karl Linnaeus.

Karl Linnaeus was born on 13 May 1707 in the south of Sweden, thus this is the 3^rd centenary anniversary of his birth. Carl Linnaeus is the most well known Swedish scientist in the world.

He has left traces in many ways: there are places that bear his name, there are locations on the Moon that have been named after him, he is depicted on Swedish banknotes, and "Linnea" is a popular first name for girls in Sweden. Carl Linnaeus placed his stamp on a complete era of scientific history - the Linnaean era. The Linnaean era is characterised by an ambition to catalogue, organise and give names to the whole natural world. Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae with his famous sexual classification system that codified and simplified the naming of plants, thus making their study accessible to all people, being his crowning achievement. The first edition (1735) consisted of just 12 folio pages. By 1766 the epoch-making book had grown to 2 300 pages with more than 15 000 species of the three natural kingdoms: minerals, plants and animals. Linnaeus also was the first to grow and patent the artificial production of pearls.

He had the satisfaction of seeing scientists adopting his dual names system of divisions and naming and above all, putting the whole of creation into a system.

I vaguely remember hearing of Linnaeus from my Primary School Days and also became aware of him through my knowledge of garden plants, however this blog was inspired by a radio interview I heard while on Holidays in Wagga Wagga. While up there I was station hopping and came across an interview about Linnaeus.

According to the Linnaeus expert, Linnaeus was obsessed with birds and animals and in his study had branches and plants all over the room with birds flying free in the room and living among the plants and branches. All this while he wrote, often with the birds themselves adding a little to his manuscripts! A messy arrangement one would think but obviously one that helped with his research.

How his wife put up with this I don’t know but it does show his commitment to his task doesn’t it? I wonder how many of us have this type of commitment to our own chosen fields?

The answer too I think also explains why very few of us will ever be as knowledgeable or influential as Karl Linnaeus. However that may be, that should never stop us from giving our best as far as personal obligations and other commitments will allow us, should it. What say you? Walter.