What is Carl Linnaeus famous for?
Carl Linnaeus is famous for his work in Taxonomy. (The science of finding naming and classifying organisms.) He was born 1707 the eldest of five children. The son of a gardener, Carl developed a interest in plant names at a young age. Due to his interest in plants and science, Carl was encouraged by his tutor to study medicine. After a year in the University of Lund, Carl Linnaeus transferred to the Uppsala University. Once there, he studied the use of plants, animals, and minerals in medicine. He then came to the attention of Olof Celsius, a theologian (a professor of religious study) and naturalist (the study of natural history). Olof was the uncle of Anders Celsius (the inventor of the Celsius thermometer.) Olof was surprised when he figured out that Carl Linnaeus knew all the names of the plants in the botanic garden. Carl Linnaeus had very little money and Olof Celsius offered Carl a place to live and access to his library. From 1732 to 1735, Carl Linnaeus travelled around Sweden in order to collect information on the country's natural resources. Carl used his new binomial system of nomenclature (that is a fancy way of saying 2-name naming system) to classify the plants and animals he found. This is now the most common system of organising organisms.
Where did we see his name recently?
Recently we have seen the name Carl Linnaeus in the Pit Rivers museum after many species names. This is because in Carl's system the name of the person who first published a description of that particular species comes after the name followed by the date the original publication can be found.
Wikipedia said " '...Patella vulgata Linnaeus, 1758'. The name 'Linnaeus' tells the reader who it was that first published a description and name for this species of limpet; 1758 is the date of the publication in which the original description can be found (in this case the 10th edition of the book Systema Naturae)".
this is what Wikipedia said about us
Homo sapiens
Linnaeus, 1758
Even though this is true we also saw the name Carl next to some specimens and believe that Carl found those particular specimens and brought them back to England.
