Linnaeus
From LoveToKnow 1911
LINNAEUS, the name usually given to Carl Von Linn E (1707-1778), Swedish botanist, who was born on the 13th of May, O.S. (May 23, N.S.) 1707 at Rashult, in the province of Smaland, Sweden, and was the eldest child of Nils Linnaeus the comminister, afterwards pastor, of the parish, and Christina Brodersonia, the daughter of the previous incumbent. In 1717 he was sent to the primary school at Wexio, and in 1724 he passed to the gymnasium. His interests were centred on botany, and his progress in the studies considered necessary for admission to holy orders, for which he was intended, was so slight that in 1726 his father was recommended to apprentice him to a tailor or shoemaker. He was saved from this fate through Dr Rothman, a physician in the town, who expressed the belief that he would yet distinguish himself in medicine and natural history, and who further instructed him in physiology. In 1727 he entered the university of Lund, but removed in the following year to that of Upsala. There, through lack of means, he had a hard struggle until, in 1729, he made the acquaintance of Dr Olaf Celsius (1670-1756), professor of theology, at that time working at his Hierobotanicon, which saw the light nearly twenty years later. Celsius, impressed with Linnaeus's knowledge and botanical collections, and finding him necessitous, offered him board and lodging.
During this period, he came upon a critique which ultimately led to the establishment of his artificial system of plant classification. This was a review of Sebastien Vaillant's Sermo de Structura Florum (Leiden, 1718), a thin quarto in French and Latin; it set him upon examining the stamens and pistils of flowers, and, becoming convinced of the paramount importance of these organs, he formed the idea of basing a system of arrangement upon them. Another work by Wallin, Pawn 4 TCWv, sive Nuptiae Arborum Dissertatio (Upsala, 1729), having fallen into his hands, he drew up a short treatise on the sexes of plants, which was placed in the hands of the younger Olaf Rudbeck (1660-1740), the professor of botany in the university. In the following year Rudbeck, whose advanced age compelled him to lecture by deputy, appointed Linnaeus his adjunctus; in the spring of 1730, therefore, the latter began his lectures. The academic garden was entirely remodelled under his auspices, and furnished with many rare species, In the preceding year he had solicited appointment to the vacant post of gardener, which was refused him on the ground of his capacity for better things.
In 1732 he undertook to explore Lapland, at the cost of the Academy of Sciences of Upsala; he traversed upwards of 4600 m., and the cost of the journey is given at 530 copper dollars, or about
