Carolus Linnaeus is one of the giants of natural science. He devised the formal two-part naming system we use to classify all lifeforms.
A well-known example of his two-part system is the dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex; another is our own species Homo sapiens.
Linnaeus pushed the science of biology to new heights by describing and classifying our own human species in precisely the same way as he classified other lifeforms. Other people at the time demanded that humans must be regarded as a special case in biology, different from animals.
Carolus Linnaeus was knighted by the King of Sweden in 1761 and took the nobleman’s name of Carl von Linne.
He died at the age of 70, on 10 January, 1778, after suffering a stroke. He was survived by his wife Sara, and five children. Two of the couple’s other children died when they were very young.
Linnaeus died on his farm about 6 miles (10 km) from Uppsala. He had bought the farm 20 years before his death. The farm was called Hammarby. Linnaeus cultivated his own private gardens at Hammarby and had hoped to be buried there. In fact he was buried in Uppsala.
Today Hammarby is a museum which features exhibitions of Linnaeus’s work, his botanical collections, and a garden and a park where his love of the natural world is reflected.
Credit : Famous Scientists
Picture Credit : Google
