“father of modern taxonomy”
3 min readMar 27, 2016
Carl Linnaeus
Born: May 23, 1707, Råshult, Sweden
Died: January 10, 1778, Uppsala, Sweden
He is also considered as one of the founders of modern ecology.
Carl Linnaeus, also known after his ennoblement as Carl von Linné, was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who formalised the modern system of naming organisms called binomial nomenclature.
Carl Linnaeus, often known by the Latin form of his name as Carolus Linnaeus, is the father of modern biological classification systems. the classification system invented by Linnaeus still forms the backbone of all modern biological sciences today.
The establishment of universally accepted conventions for the naming of organisms was Linnaeus’ main contribution to taxonomy — his work marks the starting point of consistent use of binomial nomenclature. During the 18th century expansion of natural history knowledge, Linnaeus also developed what became known as the Linnaean taxonomy; the system of scientific classification now widely used in the biological sciences. A previous zoologist Rumphius (1627–1702) had more or less approximated the Linnaean system and his material contributed to the later development of the binomial scientific classification by Linnaeus.
