What created Linnaeus in biology. A brief biography of Karl Linney

6. Linnaeus and modernity
7. The main works
8. Karl Linney in literature, art, philately
9.

Nomina si nescis periit
et cognitio rerum.
If you don’t know the names,
the knowledge of things will also die.

Karl Linney

Linnaeus laid the foundations of modern binomial nomenclature, introducing into practice the systematics of the so-called nomina trivialia, which later became used as species epithets in the binomial names of living organisms. The method of forming the scientific name introduced by Linnaeus for each species is still used. Using the Latin name of two words - the name of the genus, then the specific name - allowed us to separate the nomenclature from taxonomy.

Karl Linney is the author of the most successful artificial classification of plants and animals, which has become the basis for the scientific classification of living organisms. He divided the natural world into three “kingdoms”: mineral, vegetable and animal, using four levels: classes, orders, genera and species.

He described about one and a half thousand new plant species and a large number of animal species.

Partly to Linnaeus, humanity owes the current Celsius scale. Initially, the scale of the thermometer invented by Lynn’s colleague at Uppsala University, Professor Anders Celsius, had zero at the boiling point of water and 100 degrees at freezing. Linnaeus, who used thermometers to measure conditions in greenhouses and greenhouses, found this inconvenient and in 1745, after the death of Celsius, he “turned” the scale.

Linnaeus Collection

Karl Linnaeus left a huge collection, which included two herbariums, a collection of shells, a collection of insects and a collection of minerals, as well as a large library. “This is the greatest collection the world has ever seen,” he wrote to his wife in a letter that he bequeathed to be announced after his death.

After long family disagreements and contrary to the instructions of Karl Linnaeus, the entire collection went to his son, Karl Linnaeus the Younger, who moved it from the Hammarby Museum to his home in Uppsala and worked extremely hard to preserve the items that belong to it. The English naturalist Sir Joseph Banks offered him to sell the collection, but he refused.

But shortly after the sudden death of Carl Linnaeus Jr. from a stroke that followed in late 1783, his mother wrote to Banks that she was ready to sell him the collection. He did not buy it himself, but convinced the young English naturalist James Edward Smith to do it. Potential buyers were also Karl Linnaeus' apprentice Baron Klas Alströmer, Russian Empress Catherine the Great, English botanist John Sibthorp Russian. and others, but Smith turned out to be quick: quickly approving the list sent to him, he approved the deal. Scientists and students of Uppsala University demanded that the authorities do everything possible to leave Linnaeus’s legacy in their homeland, but King Gustav III of Sweden was in Italy at that time, and government officials replied that they could not solve this issue without his intervention ...

In September 1784, the collection on the English brig left Stockholm and was soon safely delivered to England. The legend that the Swedes sent their warship to intercept the English brig, which was taking out the Linnaeus collection, has no scientific basis, although it is engraved on the engraving from the book by R. Thornton “A New Illustration of the Linnaeus System”.

The collection received by Smith included 19 thousand herbarium sheets, more than three thousand specimens of insects, more than one and a half thousand shells, more than seven hundred samples of coral, two and a half thousand samples of minerals; the library consisted of two and a half thousand books, over three thousand letters, as well as manuscripts by Karl Linnaeus, his son and other scholars.

Karl Linney

(1707-1778)

Karl Linney, the famous Swedish naturalist, was born in Sweden on May 13, 1707. He was a noble family, his ancestors were simple peasants; father was a poor village priest. The year after the birth of his son, he received a more profitable parish in Stenbrogult, a year, and Karl Linney spent his entire childhood until he was ten years old.

My father was a big lover of flowers and gardening; in the picturesque Stenbrogult he planted a garden, which soon became the first in the entire province. This garden and father’s activities, of course, played a significant role in the spiritual development of the future founder of scientific botany. The boy was given a special corner in the garden, several beds, where he was considered a complete master; they were called “Karl’s kindergarten”

When the boy was 10 years old, he was sent to elementary school in the city of Vexie. School activities of a gifted child went poorly; he continued to study botany with enthusiasm, and preparing lessons was tedious for him. His father was going to take the young man from the gymnasium, but the case pushed him with the local doctor Rothman. Rothman’s classes at the “underperforming” school went better. The doctor began to introduce him little by little to medicine and even - contrary to teachers' reviews - made him fall in love with Latin.

At the end of the gymnasium, Karl entered Lund University, but soon transferred from there to one of the most prestigious universities in Sweden - Uppsala. Linnaeus was only 23 years old when professor of botany Oluas Tselzky took him as his assistant, after which Karl himself, as a student, began to teach at the university. Very significant for the young scientist was a trip to Lapland. Linnaeus walked nearly 700 kilometers, collected significant collections, and as a result published his first book, Flora of Lapland.

In the spring of 1735, Linnaeus arrived in Holland, in Amsterdam. In the small campus of Gardkvik, he passed the exam and on June 24 he defended his dissertation on a medical subject - about fever. The immediate goal of his journey was achieved, but Karl remained. He remained fortunately for himself and for science: a rich and highly cultured Holland served as a cradle for his ardent creative activity and his high-profile fame.

One of his new friends, Dr. Gronov, invited him to publish some work; then Linnaeus compiled and printed the first draft of his famous work, which laid the foundation for systematic zoology and botany in the modern sense. This was the first edition of his “Systema naturae”, which concluded for the time being only 14 pages of a huge format, on which brief descriptions of minerals, plants and animals were grouped in tables. With this publication begins a series of rapid scientific successes of Linnaeus.

His new works, published in 1736-1737, already contained in a more or less finished form his main and most fruitful ideas: a system of generic and specific names, improved terminology, and an artificial system of the plant kingdom.

At this time, he received a brilliant offer to become George Cliffort's personal physician with a salary of 1,000 guilders and a full content.

Despite the successes that surrounded Linnaeus in Holland, he began to gradually pull home. In 1738 he returned to his homeland and faced with unexpected problems. He, accustomed in three years of foreign life to universal respect, friendship and tokens of the most prominent and famous people, at home, at home, was just a doctor without a place, without practice and without money, and no one cared for his scholarship . So Linnaeus the nerd gave way to Linnaeus the doctor, and his favorite activities were temporarily stopped by him.

However, already in 1739, the Swedish Sejm appropriated to him one hundred lucats of annual content with an obligation to teach botany and mineralogy.

Finally, he found an opportunity to marry, and on June 26, 1739, a five-year postponed wedding took place. Alas, as often happens, his wife was the exact opposite of her husband. An ill-mannered, rude and grumpy woman, without mental interests, who was only interested in the financial aspects of her husband. Linnaeus had one son and several daughters; mother loved her daughters, and they grew up under her influence uneducated and petty girls of the bourgeois family. To his son, a gifted boy, his mother had a strange dislike, in every possible way pursued him and tried to restore his father against him. But Linnaeus loved his son and with passion developed in him those inclinations for which he himself suffered so much in childhood.

In 1742, Linnaeus's dream came true, and he becomes a professor of botany at his home university. All his other life passed in this city almost without a break. He occupied the department for more than thirty years and left it only shortly before his death.

Now Linnaeus ceased to engage in medical practice, was engaged only in scientific research. He described all medicinal plants known at that time and studied the effect of drugs made from them.

At this time, he invented a thermometer using the Celsius temperature scale.

But Linnaeus still considered the systematization of plants the main business of his life. The main work, Plant System, took 25 years, and only in 1753 did he publish his main work.

The scientist decided to systematize the entire plant world of the Earth. At the time when Linea began his activities, zoology was in a period of exceptional predominance of systematics. The task, which she then set herself, consisted in a simple acquaintance with all breeds of animals living on the globe, without regard to their internal structure and to the connection of individual forms with each other; The subject of zoological writings of that time was a simple enumeration and description of all known animals.

Thus, the zoology and botany of that time were mainly engaged in the study and description of species, but there was boundless confusion in their recognition. The descriptions that the author gave to new animals or plants were inconsistent and inaccurate. The second main drawback of the science of that time was the lack of a basic and accurate classification.

These basic shortcomings of systematic zoology and botany were corrected by the genius of Linnaeus. Remaining on the same basis of the study of nature on which his predecessors and contemporaries stood, he was a powerful reformer of science. His merit is purely methodological. He did not discover new areas of knowledge and hitherto unknown laws of nature, but he created a new method, clear, logical. And with the help of it he brought light and order to where chaos and confusion reigned before him, which gave a huge impetus to science, paving the way for further research in a powerful way. This was a necessary step in science, without which further progress would not have been possible.

The scientist proposed a binary nomenclature - a system for the scientific name of plants and animals. Based on the structural features, he divided all the plants into 24 classes, highlighting also individual genera and species. Each name, in his opinion, should consist of two words - generic and species designations.

Despite the fact that the principle applied by him was quite artificial, it turned out to be very convenient and became generally pleasant in the scientific classification, retaining its significance in our time. But in order for the new nomenclature to be fruitful, it was necessary for the new nomenclature to be fruitful, it was necessary that the species that received the conditional name, at the same time, be so accurately and thoroughly described that they cannot be mixed with other species kind of. Linnaeus did this: he was the first to introduce a strictly defined, exact language and precise definition of attributes into science.

His essay, Fundamental Botany, published in Amsterdam during his life with Cliffort and representing the result of seven years of work, sets out the foundations of the botanical terminology that he used to describe plants.

The Linnaean zoological system did not play such a large role in science as the botanical one, although in some respects it stood even higher than it, as less artificial, but it did not represent its main advantages - convenience in determination. Linnaeus had little knowledge of anatomy.

Linnaeus' works gave a tremendous impetus to systematic botany and zoology. The developed terminology and convenient nomenclature made it easier to cope with a huge material, which was so difficult to understand before. Soon, all classes of plants and the animal kingdom were thoroughly studied in a systematic way, and the number of species described increased from hour to hour.

Later, Linnaeus applied his principle to the classification of all nature, in particular minerals and rocks. He also became the first scientist to attribute humans and monkeys to one group of animals - primates. As a result of his observations, the natural scientist compiled yet another book - The System of Nature. He worked on it all his life, from time to time reprinting his work. In total, the scientist prepared 12 editions of this work, which from a small book gradually turned into a voluminous multivolume edition.

The last years of Linnaeus' life were overshadowed by senility and decrepitude. He died on January 10, 1778, in the seventy-first year of his life.

After his death, the department of botany at Uppsala University was received by his son, who zealously set about continuing the work of his father. But in 1783 he suddenly fell ill and died in the forty-second year of his life. The son was not married, and with his death, the family of Linnaeus in the male generation ceased.

Karl Linney was born on May 23, 1707 in the village of Roshult in Sweden in the family of a priest. Two years later, he moved to Stenbrohult with his family. Interest in plants in the biography of Karl Linnaeus manifested itself in childhood. He received his primary education at a school in the city of Veksjo, and after graduation he entered the gymnasium. Linnaeus' parents wanted the boy to continue his family business and become a pastor. But Karl’s theology was of little interest. He devoted much time to the study of plants.

Thanks to the insistence of the school teacher Johan Rothman, parents let Karl go to study medical sciences. Then the university stage began. Karl began to study at the University of Lund. And in order to become more familiar with medicine, a year later he moved to Uppsald University. In addition, he continued to engage in self-education. Together with a student at the same university, Peter Arthady Linnaeus, began revising and criticizing the principles of natural science.

In 1729, an acquaintance with W. Celsius took place, which played an important role in the formation of Linnaeus as a botanist. Then Karl moved to the house of Professor Celsius, began to get acquainted with his huge library. The basic ideas of Linnaeus on the classification of plants were presented in his first work, "Introduction to the sexual life of plants."

A year later, Linnaeus had already begun to teach and lecture in the botanical garden of Uppsald University.

The period from May to October 1732 he spent in Lapland. After fruitful work during the trip, his book “Brief Flora of Lapland” was published. It was in this work that the reproductive system in the plant world was described in detail. The following year, Linnaeus became interested in mineralogy, even published a textbook. Then, in 1734, in order to study plants, he went to the province of Dalarna.

He received his doctorate in medical sciences in June 1735 at Harderwijk University. Linney’s next work, The System of Nature, marked a new stage in his career and, as a whole, in the life of Linnaeus. Thanks to new connections and friends, he received the position of superintendent of one of the largest botanical gardens in Holland, in which plants from around the world were collected. So Karl continued the classification of plants. And after the death of his friend Peter Artedi published his work, later used his ideas for classifying fish. While living in Holland, the works of Linnaeus were published: Fundamenta Botanica, Musa Cliffortiana, Hortus Cliffortianus, Critica botanica, Genera plantarum and others.

The scientist returned to his homeland in 1773. There, in Stockholm, he engaged in medical practice, applying his knowledge of plants to treat people. He also taught, was chairman of the Royal Academy of Sciences, professor at Uppsala University (retained his post until his death).

Then Carly Linney, in his biography, went on an expedition to the islands of the Baltic Sea, visited western and southern Sweden. And in 1750 he became the rector of the university, where he had previously taught. In 1761 he received the status of a nobleman. And on January 10, 1778, Linnaeus died.

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Karl Linney

(1707-1778)

At this time, he received a brilliant offer to become George Cliffort's personal physician with a salary of 1,000 guilders and a full content.

However, already in 1739, the Swedish Sejm appropriated to him one hundred lucats of annual content with an obligation to teach botany and mineralogy.

Now Linnaeus ceased to engage in medical practice, was engaged only in scientific research. He described all medicinal plants known at that time and studied the effect of drugs made from them.

At this time, he invented a thermometer using the Celsius temperature scale.

But Linnaeus still considered the systematization of plants the main business of his life. The main work, Plant System, took 25 years, and only in 1753 did he publish his main work.

The last years of Linnaeus' life were overshadowed by senility and decrepitude. He died on January 10, 1778, in the seventy-first year of his life.

Linnaeus Karl (1707-1778), a Swedish naturalist who created a classification system for flora and fauna.

Born May 23, 1707 in the city of Roshuld (Sweden) in the family of a pastor. From his father, young Karl inherited a passion for botany.

After studying natural and medical sciences at Lund (1727) and Uppsala (since 1728) universities, Linnaeus traveled to Lapland in 1732 (a natural area in northern Sweden, Norway, Finland and the west of the Kola Peninsula). As a result, the work of Flora of Lapland (1732; complete publication of 1737) appeared.

In 1735, the scientist moved to the city of Hartekamp (Netherlands), where he received the post of head of the botanical garden; defended his doctoral dissertation on the topic "A new hypothesis of intermittent fevers."

Since 1738 he was engaged in medical practice in Stockholm; in 1739 he headed the naval hospital, gained the right to open corpses in order to determine the cause of death. He participated in the creation of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and became its first president (1739).

Since 1741, he headed the department at Uppsala University, where he taught medicine and natural sciences.

Linnaeus' most significant work is The System of Nature. The book was first published in 1735 and survived 12 editions during the lifetime of the author. It was in this work that Linnaeus applied and introduced the so-called binary nomenclature, according to which each species is designated by two Latin names - generic and species.

The scientist defined the concept of a species, using both morphological (similarity within the progeny of one family) and physiological (presence of prolific offspring) criteria.

He established a clear gradation of systematic categories: class, order, gender, species, variation. Linnaeus based the classification of plants on the number, size and location of the stamens and pistils of the flower, as well as a sign of a single, double, or multi-homed plant. He believed that the reproductive organs are the most essential and permanent parts of the body in plants. Based on this principle, the scientist divided all the plants into 24 classes.

Linnaeus openly and described about 1,500 species of plants. The classification of the animal world that he proposed subsequently underwent significant changes thanks to new discoveries in the field of biology, but was revolutionary for its time. Its distinguishing feature is that man is included in the system of the animal kingdom and belongs to the class of mammals, a squad of primates. The dual nomenclature system proposed by Linnaeus is still in use today.