| 1 | Name: | Carolus Linnaeus | |
| Year Elected: | 1769 | ||
| Residency: | International | ||
| Living? : | Deceased | ||
| Birth Date: | 5/23/1707 | ||
| Death Date: | 1/10/1778 | ||
Carolus Linnaeus (23 May 1707–10 January 1778) was a taxonomist, naturalist, gardener, physician, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected 1769. Born in Råsult, Sweden to pastor Nils Nicolaus Linnaeus and his wife, Christina Broderzonia, he began schooling in a nearby town before beginning his medical studies at the University of Lund, later transferring to Uppsala University in 1728. He moved to the Netherlands in 1735 and earned his medical doctorate later that year, after which he moved to Leiden and published his first work Systema Naturae with the help of doctor and botanist Johan Gronovius and doctor Isaac Lawson. He moved to England in July of 1736. Though initially met with skepticism from his peers, his system of sex-based plant-classification proposed in Systema Naturae slowly won over much of the academic circles in London and Oxford, and later, so too would his system of binomial nomenclature which he elaborated on in his Fundamenta Botanica of 1736 and Classes Plantarum of 1738. That same year Linnaeaus opened a medical practice in Stockholm, Sweden and quickly earned a reputation that landed him as Physician to the Admiralty and the first president of the Academy of Science of Stockholm. In 1741 he began teaching at Uppsala University and managing the gardens there. Meanwhile, the Linnaean system became widely accepted among his peers and Linnaeus was elected to the Royal Society of London in 1753. Gradually, his system grew to become the universal scientific standard for taxonomical classification and in 1788 the Linnaean Society of London was founded. In his final years, he suffered two strokes and died of an ulcerated bladder in early 1778. (DNB) | |||