by What Linnaeus Saw- A Scientist's Quest to Name Every Living Thing (retail) (epub)
That generation of Linnaeans grew into independent, creative scientists. These “comets amongst the stars” opened doors for “comets” in the next generation.
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THE PROFESSOR
If a tree dies, plant another in its place.
—CARL LINNAEUS, LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT
An old man browsed in an Uppsala bookshop. According to a German botany student who was new in town that day, the man was shabby and unshaven, of average height. His shoes and stockings were dusty from the road. A medallion was pinned to his “ancient green jacket.” The medal, the Knighthood of the Polar Star, had been awarded by King Adolf Fredrik to the world-famous Carl Linnaeus. He wore it every day.
That September day in 1765, Linnaeus had just returned to the university for the start of the fall semester. International students, like the one in the bookshop, often rented rooms in a house directly across from the Linnaeus family home. A couple of winters earlier, for instance, three of them—Johan Christian Fabricius and Johan Zoëga from Denmark, and Linnaeus’s only American student, Adam Kuhn from Philadelphia—watched every morning as their professor, in his red coat and green, fur-trimmed cap, pipe in hand, hurried across the street for a short chat. These sessions rolled along for an hour or two, Linnaeus teaching, answering and posing questions, and laughing often.
These students fared well after their classes with him. Zoëga became a botanist, Fabricius a zoology professor and one of the century’s most important entomologists, and Kuhn one of three physicians to teach at America’s first medical college, now the University of Pennsylvania.
Outside of the school year, summer brought mosquitoes and stagnant, unhealthy air along the city’s swampy river. Many residents suffered uncontrollable fevers and died from malaria. To protect his family, Linnaeus had bought a 200-acre farm estate called Hammarby in 1758, with a red-timbered farmhouse for his family and other houses for tenant farmers. From then on, they spent summers in the country, as well as Christmas and Easter vacations. (This would be the place where, after Linnaeus’s death, Sara Lisa would live.) There, Linnaeus would rise around 4 a.m. and rush outside into the gardens in his nightshirt and stubbly beard. “Nature does not wait for powder and wigs!” he said.
With Hammarby a nine-mile walk from Uppsala along a dusty wagon path, Linnaeus’s foreign students usually rented a farmhouse nearby for the summer. At 6 a.m., they would join him for breakfast, talking in Latin about natural science until mid-morning.
The whole family spent Sundays with the students at their lodgings. They hired a local farmer to play the nyckelharpa, a Swedish instrument played with a bow like a violin but fingered on a keyboard. In the barn, the students danced minuets and country tunes with Linnaeus’s unmarried daughters. Every once in a while during an intricate Swedish dance called a polska, the energetic professor outdanced them all.
Also on Sundays, Linnaeus and his dog, Pompe, walked together from Hammarby to the church in nearby Danmark. Linnaeus often left in the middle of exceptionally long sermons, followed by Pompe. On occasions when Linnaeus could not attend, Pompe went to church alone, sat on the Hammarby pew, and left after an hour. The pastor complained, and Linnaeus teased that the sermons must be too long if even a dog would walk out.
In the yard at Hammarby, Linnaeus established a clump of peloria, the plant that had caused him so much trouble. He dug unusual forms of other plants into the same garden, including a wild strawberry with strange leaves. Every summer he watched this garden flourish. Did he wonder when, or if, those odd plants would ever change into normal forms? Was he hoping to see bizarre curiosities arise from other species right there at his doorstep?
Linnaeus’s house and garden at Hammarby, in an engraving published in 1823.
Gardens for teaching and research unfolded around the place. There were vegetables, apple trees, and fields of grain for making bread and brewing beer. On a hillside he called Siberia, he sowed seeds given to him by Catherine the Great, the empress of Russia. He planted a grove of trees which Lisa Stina’s daughter, Sara Elisabeth, called “Grandpa’s leafy bower” and where the family sometimes enjoyed dinner. He also grew a plum tree for each of his daughters, their family tradition. Cows grazed in the fields. He called them Summer-Rose, Fair-Cheek, Lily, and Blossom.
Inside the house, he pasted botanical prints like wallpaper. Hand-colored prints from Georg Ehret and others covered his bedroom walls. In his workroom, two hundred uncolored prints featured Caribbean plants drawn by a French monk, Charles Plumier. These had been sent to Linnaeus to verify the species’ names before they were published.
When a fire destroyed a third of Uppsala in 1766 and threatened his home and collections in the city, Linnaeus began building a little stone museum at Hammarby. Unheated, with no fireplace or stove that could cause a fire, the building would house his priceless natural collections. At the top of a rocky rise away from the house, it became his “castle in the air.” Its single room contained his books and specimens. There were wooden benches for students and a “study-horse,” a peculiar lectern-chair that Linnaeus designed. He straddled it when he taught. Overhead, the skin of a giant oarfish, the king of herring, stretched across the sixteen-foot room.
Carl Linnaeus at age sixty-eight, wearing the medallion of the Knighthood of the Polar Star pinned to his jacket, in a portrait by Alexander Roslin.
After he finished the last volume of his lengthy twelfth edition of Systema Naturae in 1768, life began to change for Linnaeus. Although his enthusiasm never dimmed, his memory was slipping. He was growing older, and his science was growing up. Most of his student-explorers had finished their travels around the planet; several had died during their expeditions. Trained by Linnaeus, they had discovered plants and animals and experienced continents that their professor had only read about. Already the world was moving on.
In the middle of a lecture in 1774, Linnaeus suffered the first of several strokes. He died four years later.
Then began the transfer of power—Linnaeus’s knowledge, his collections, his professorship. When Daniel Solander turned down Linnaeus’s offer to be his academic successor, Linnaeus had arranged for his son, Carl, to step into the botany post at Uppsala. But Carl Linnaeus the Younger died of a stroke in 1783, and Linnaeus’s last “apostle,” Carl Peter Thunberg, was hired. During his explorations, Thunberg had become a well-respected botanist. Like others of the time, he sought to improve on Linnaeus’s system of classifying plants by creating a truly natural one; his professor would have been pleased. However, Dr. Thunberg worked at a great disadvantage because most of Linnaeus’s personal collections had been shipped off to England. Sara Lisa, needing money to support her daughters, had sold the collections to a wealthy young amateur botanist, James Edward Smith. The Englishman paid 1,000 British guineas for everything—a fraction of the value that Linnaeus had estimated in his will.
When the twenty-six crates arrived in London, Smith unpacked 19,000 dried plants, 50 stuffed birds in glass boxes, 150 dried fishes, 3,000 insects, 1,500 shells, 800 corals, 2,500 minerals, 2,500 books and manuscripts, and the three gray cupboards. (One of the cupboards was later returned to Linnaeus’s house in Hammarby.) Smith discovered an unbelievable bonus tucked inside as stuffing. Linnaeus’s frugal widow had padded the crates with a lot of old paper—thousands of letters from scientists all over the world!
Smith established the Linnean Society of London to house the specimens, letters, and manuscripts, making them available for scientists to study. The Society’s meeting room quickly became an important center for scientific discussion. When a joint paper by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace was read there introducing the theory of evolution in 1858, it received very little interest. However, a year later Darwin’s book was published and sparked intense debates.
Today scientists from around the world continue to visit London to consult Linnaeus’s own collections. They descend into the Linnean Society’s climate-controlled underground vault to study the or
iginals. They use his specimens as reference points in identifying species and as evidence of environmental change. In addition, high-quality scans of Linnaeus’s handwritten manuscripts, letters, and herbarium pages are available online. These scans enable scientists to zoom in and examine minute details of the actual plants that Linnaeus himself described.
During the 250 years since his death, Linnaeus has been hailed as a hero and scorned as a has-been. His systematic work resulted in a new field called taxonomy, in which organisms are grouped by their similarities, placed in a hierarchy, and given unique scientific names. Some biologists claim that Linnaeus, as the father of taxonomy, was merely a list-maker. They disregard the many ways in which Linnaeus contributed to science.
He brought order and clarity to the chaotic study of the natural sciences. He introduced standardized terms for talking about science, consistent rules for naming, and a basic structure to build on. Classification, or taxonomy, was never intended to replace botany, zoology, or geology. Just as a librarian helps writers and readers find what they need by organizing books, taxonomists help us see patterns in nature’s bigger picture by organizing species. The librarian’s work is necessary for literature. Taxonomy is necessary for natural science.
However, Linnaeus did more than organize. When he recorded the local names of plants and their uses by indigenous people during his travels in Sápmi, he pointed the way toward the twentieth-century discipline of ethnobotany, the study of people’s traditional knowledge of plants.
During a 1745 trip to an island off the Swedish coast, he proved himself an early proponent of the science later known as dendrochronology. A recently felled oak tree prompted him to measure the widths of its annual growth rings. Later he consulted meteorological records and determined that the tree’s growth had been greater during warmer summers and slowed dramatically during the summers that followed the severe winters of 1578, 1687, and 1709. Today’s dendrochronologists use the growth of trees recorded in their annual rings to estimate environmental changes over time.
In addition, Linnaeus and his students, including Pehr Kalm who traveled in North America, advocated the wise use of resources and warned against excessive harvests of plant crops, animals, and timber. Another of Linnaeus’s students composed a poem in 1762 asking a very modern question: “Why should we treat with contempt / and plunder forests and meadows / an inheritance given to us. . . . I deeply pity those who will be born a hundred years from now” in a world without forests.
Linnaeus saw evidence of the struggle for survival and the delicate balance of nature. He called the environment a “butcher’s block” and wrote about competition as the “war of all against all.” For example:
There are some viviparous flies, which bring forth 2,000 young. These in a little time would fill the air, and like clouds intercept the rays of the sun, unless they were devoured by birds, spiders, and many other animals.
He also considered new ways to solve problems. For instance, he told students in a lecture that “until now no one has thought about exterminating insects with insects. Most every insect has its lion which persecutes and exterminates it; these predatory insects ought to be tamed and taken care of, so they can purge plants.” He thought this would enable farmers to keep pests such as snails, caterpillars, and ants away from their crops. Today biological controls are sometimes used as alternatives to pesticides.
Throughout his travel journals and papers are astute observations that sound like twenty-first-century goals—conservation, biodiversity, and sustainable living. In many ways he was ahead of his time.
Few people in the history of biology have looked so closely at so many kinds of organisms as that seemingly unimpressive man in the Uppsala bookshop. To organize all knowledge about the natural world, that man—one of the most influential botanists in history—broke the old rules of science and replaced them with new ones.
The rule-breaker became the rule-maker.
Carl Linnaeus was driven by curiosity and passion. He was a brilliant yet flawed man who helped to organize the way we think about the natural world.
Science is the pursuit of truth. Theories are the very nature of science, and they are provisional. They are always waiting for new data, for new tools, for new ways to be analyzed.
And, as Linnaeus understood, for new scientists.
Science remains a relay race.
TIMELINE
1622—Johanne Pedersdatter (b. 1584), Carl Linnaeus’s great-great-grandmother, is convicted of witchcraft and burned at the stake in Stavanger, Norway.
YOUTH AND EARLY SCHOOL YEARS, 1707–27
1707, May 23—Carl Linnaeus is born in Råshult, Sweden, to Pastor Nils Linnaeus and his wife, Christina Brodersonia.
1708, June—The family moves to the rectory in Stenbrohult, Sweden.
1711—Carl plants his first garden with weeds and wildflowers.
1714—Nils sends Carl to study with a tutor in Växjö, thirty miles from home.
1716—Carl enters the lower level of Växjö Cathedral School.
1717, June 10—In Paris, Sébastien Vaillant delivers his speech on plant sexuality.
1723—Nils tries to grow big pumpkins in his summer garden for his wife. In September, Carl enters the upper level of the Cathedral School.
1725—Carl receives a blank book in which he keeps his first notes about plants.
1726, September—Nils learns that Carl is failing his theological studies. Dr. Johan Rothman begins tutoring Carl in botany and medicine.
1727, May—Carl graduates from Växjö, eleventh out of sixteen students.
UNIVERSITY YEARS, 1727–35
1727, August—Enters Lund University.
1728, September—Transfers to Uppsala University.
1729, March—Meets Peter Artedi for the first time in Uppsala.
May—Completes a handwritten work, “Spolia Botanica” (The spoils of botany), classifying plants from three regions of Sweden.
1730, May 4—Delivers his first public lecture as the botanical demonstrator. Prepares Hortus Uplandicus (The gardens of Uppland), a handwritten guide to the plants in the university garden and others around the province of Uppland.
1732, May 12–October 10—Explores Sápmi, crossing the Arctic Circle.
1733—Begins lecturing on mineralogy.
June 6—Carl’s mother dies.
1734, July 3–August 17—Explores the Swedish province of Dalarna, accompanied by students, to assess the natural resources for the governor.
Early September—Peter Artedi leaves Uppsala for London.
December 24—Arrives at Claes Sohlberg’s family home for Christmas in Falun, Sweden.
Late December—Meets Sara Elisabet (Sara Lisa) Moraea at a party.
1735, January 20—Proposes marriage to Sara Lisa in Falun. Visits his father in Stenbrohult.
April—Departs Sweden.
YEARS ABROAD, 1735–38
1735, April 27—In Hamburg, Germany, examines seven-headed hydra.
May—Leaves Hamburg.
June 13—Arrives in Amsterdam.
June 18—Registers at the University of Harderwijk, defends his dissertation on malaria.
June 24—Receives medical degree.
July 8—Meets Artedi unexpectedly in Leiden.
July 17—Introduces Artedi to Seba in Amsterdam.
August 13—Visits George Clifford’s estate with Burman.
September 13—Moves to George Clifford’s estate, Hartekamp, as live-in physician and garden director.
September 28—Peter Artedi’s body is found in an Amsterdam canal.
December 13—Publishes the first edition of Systema Naturae (The system of nature) in Leiden.
1736, January 24—Banana plant at Hartekamp blooms.
February 20—Publishes Musa Cliffortiana (Clifford’s banana).
August—Publishes Bibliotheca Botanica (The botanical library).
July 21–late August—Visits England to find plants for Clifford’s
garden, tour museums, and meet naturalists.
September 3—Publishes Fundamenta Botanica (The foundations of botany).
1737—Publishes Flora Lapponica (Lapland flora), Genera Plantarum (Genera of plants), and Critica Botanica (The rules for botanical naming). Spends winter in Leiden classifying plants in the botanic garden.
1738, March—Publishes Hortus Cliffortianus (Clifford’s garden), describing all 2,500 plants growing or preserved at Hartekamp.
April—Publishes Artedi’s book, Ichthyologia.
May–June—Leaves Holland to return to Sweden, visiting Paris en route.
MEDICAL PRACTICE, 1738–41
1738, September—Begins treating patients in his new medical practice in Stockholm.
1739—Convinces Olof Rudbeck, director of the botanical garden in Uppsala, to hire Dietrich Nietzel, Clifford’s gardener. Nietzel accepts the offer and moves to Uppsala, where he spends the rest of his life. Clifford never writes to Linnaeus again.
June 26—Marries Sara Lisa Moraea at her parents’ home, called Sveden, in Falun.
1740—Publishes the second edition of Systema Naturae.
1741, January 20—Son Carl the Younger is born.
PROFESSORSHIP, 1741–72
1741, May 5—Appointed professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala University.
May–July—Leads a small group of students on a natural history expedition to the Baltic islands of Öland and Götland.
October 27—Gives his inaugural lecture, “An oration concerning the necessity of traveling in one’s own country.”
1742—Olof Celsius sends him a strange plant collected by a student. Later Linnaeus names it peloria, meaning “monster.”