Carl Linnasus Life and Achievements.
Carl Linneaus is the best-known Swedish scientist across the globe. He has left his mark in many ways places baring his name and even parts of the moon have been named after him he is even depicted on Swedish banknotes. The reason for his fame and his stamp on scientific history known as the Linnaean era is for his ambition to catalogue, organise and name the whole natural world.
He is most recognized as a botanist but was also a physician and a zoologist who laid the foundations for the current scheme of nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern taxonomy and is thought as one of the fathers of modern ecology.
Although best known as a botanist his scientific achievements expand into the mineral world and zoology. Always being curios about the complete natural world since a young age he wanted to know the whole map of nature. This mapping is the name convention known as the “binary nomenclature” that he himself introduced. Linnaeus published rule-books on the criteria of the system and after initially some resistance it has become not to just control natural history but influences other fields of science. Linnaeus based his science on a firm terminology, which formulates the concept of species and sets the broad dimensions of natural history. For example humans in this system are known as Homo Sapiens and are the primates class of mammals and Mammalia are all concepts from Linnaeus.
In the early eighteenth century scientific name for species were already in Latin but most were often long and awkward. Linnaeus’ idea was to divide nature into separate groups based on sharing physical characteristics. Firstly there were the three kingdoms of plants, animals and minerals. Kingdoms were then divided into classes and then orders which were then split into genera, then species. Since then a few other ranks have been added, most notably phyla or divisions between kingdoms and classes. Groups of organisms at any rank are now called taxa or taxonomic groups.
He is most recognized as a botanist but was also a physician and a zoologist who laid the foundations for the current scheme of nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern taxonomy and is thought as one of the fathers of modern ecology.
Although best known as a botanist his scientific achievements expand into the mineral world and zoology. Always being curios about the complete natural world since a young age he wanted to know the whole map of nature. This mapping is the name convention known as the “binary nomenclature” that he himself introduced. Linnaeus published rule-books on the criteria of the system and after initially some resistance it has become not to just control natural history but influences other fields of science. Linnaeus based his science on a firm terminology, which formulates the concept of species and sets the broad dimensions of natural history. For example humans in this system are known as Homo Sapiens and are the primates class of mammals and Mammalia are all concepts from Linnaeus.
In the early eighteenth century scientific name for species were already in Latin but most were often long and awkward. Linnaeus’ idea was to divide nature into separate groups based on sharing physical characteristics. Firstly there were the three kingdoms of plants, animals and minerals. Kingdoms were then divided into classes and then orders which were then split into genera, then species. Since then a few other ranks have been added, most notably phyla or divisions between kingdoms and classes. Groups of organisms at any rank are now called taxa or taxonomic groups.