Carolus Linnaeus lived from 1707 to1778. He was born as Carl Linnè in May 23,1707 in Rashult. In later years he used the Latinized form of his name. Linnaeus’s father was a minister. He wanted Linnaeus to be a minister also but Linnaeus was interested in plants and animals. The village doctor saw Linnaeus’s startling talents and he encouraged Linnaeus’s father to let him look after Linnaeus while he went to school to study medicine at the University of Uppsala in the year 1728.

When he was Uppsala his talents soon won him an engagement as a lecturer about botany. A while later the academy of science in Uppsala sent him on an 8,000 km botanical survey of Lapland. As a result of his journey, he printed his book Flora Lapponica in the year 1737. Linnaeus acquired his doctors degree in a university in Holland, with finanical help from his future wife.

In Holland, Linnaeus became a medical attendant to an Amsterdam banker. The banker had a botanical garden. When he made Linnaeus the manager of this garden Linnaeus wrote Systema Naturae which means the system of nature, and Genera Plantarum which means species of plants. In later editions he presented his famous system of classification. When Linnaeus started writing Systema Naturae and Genera Plantarum, Linnaeus didn’t do what other scientists did before him, which was using large classes. He used separate species and he arranged them according to their similarities. He worked from specimen to kingdom rather than the other way around. He borrowed the naming system of Casper Bauhin but he gave the system a more theoretical basis by creating the beginnings of the new system of kingdom, classes, genera by adopting the system of John Ray.

Linnaeus wrote more than one hundred and eighty works before and after he was named the Professor of Uppsala in 1742, which was were Linnaeus spent the rest of his life. Linnaeus died on January 10,1778.