Mini Stories from the Life of Carl Linnaeus

Carl Linnaeus thought of himself as a second Adam

Carl Linnaeus continued to revise his “Systema Naturae”, which grew from a slim pamphlet into a multivolume work, as his ideas were evolving and more and more plant and animal specimens were sent to him from every corner of the globe. His pride in his work was very much evident; he thought of himself as a second Adam. He liked to say, "God created, Linnaeus organized".

Thermometer with 100 as the melting point of ice and 0 the boiling point of water

In in 1745, Carl Linnaeus designed today's thermometer scale by reversing that invented by Anders Celsius; originally 100 was the melting point of ice and 0 the boiling point of water. Celsius originally called his scale centigrade derived from the Latin for "hundred steps". For years it was simply referred to as the Swedish thermometer.

Carl Linnaeus’s “Systema Naturae” was an eleven page work!

The first edition of Carl Linnaeus’s “Systema Naturae” for the classification and naming of plants and animals, was printed in in 1735. It was an eleven page work. By the time it reached its 10th edition (1758), it classified 4,400 species of animals and 7,700 species of plants.
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