Carolus Linnaeus was a Swedish scientist who laid the foundations for the modern system of taxonomy. He was born in 1707 in the village of Råshult in Småland, Sweden. He was educated at the Universities of Lund and Uppsala, and in 1735 he published his first major work, Systema Naturae, which classified and described the natural world.
Linnaeus’s work was instrumental in developing the binomial nomenclature system, which is used to this day. He also developed a system of plant classification known as the sexual system—this method is still used today. Linnaeus was a prolific writer, and over the course of his career he published over 30 works. He also collected and classified specimens from all over the world, and his herbarium and museum were among the largest of their kind.
Linnaeus was a respected scientist in his day, and was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1739. He died in 1778, and is buried in Uppsala’s Linnaean Garden
