Carl Linnaeus (1707–78)

Linnaeus was a Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician who brought biology into the modern age through his system of classification. He studied, first at Lund, then at Uppsala universities, taught botany, and in 1735 travelled to Holland and earned his medical degree (which he had started at Lund).

System Naturae in its first edition comprised only eleven pages, but it was a game-changer; he divided the natural world into Animal, Plant and Mineral Kingdoms, with the Plant Kingdom listing around 6,000 species. The taxonomical hierarchy used five levels – Kingdom, Class, Order, Genus and Species (Family has been subsequently added between Order and Genus) – and each organism was assigned a binomial title, comprising genus and species, written in Latin. The book was expanded, modified and corrected such that twelve editions were eventually published under his authorship, but the 10th edition of 1758 is widely regarded as the most important. The 12th edition had expanded to 2,400 pages.

Other works of botanical importance from Linnaeus include Biblioteca Botanica (1735), Fundamenta Botanica (1736), Critica Botanica (1737), Genera Plantarum (1737), Philosophia Botanica (1751) and Species Plantarum (1753).

Linnaeus’ achievements were recognised within his own lifetime, along with his growing international academic reputation; he became the chief physician to the royal family in 1747, rector of Uppsala University in 1750, and was ennobled in 1761.

Meanwhile, since the fifteenth century, a revolution had been ongoing, as European countries strove to push the boundaries of the known world and establish new trade routes, following the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire. This new era would become known as the ‘Age of Discovery’ … and spices were the key motivator.