page_title: Carl Linnaeus
section_title: Systema Naturae
hierarchical_section_title: Carl Linnaeus / Major publications / Systema Naturae
caption_attribution_description: English: Title page of the 10th edition of Systema naturæ written by Carl Linnæus, published in 1758 by L. Salvius in Stockholm. Digitized in 2004 from an original copy of the 1758 edition held by Göttingen State and University Library, signature &lt;8 H NAT I, 7105 &lt;10&gt;:1&gt;. Uploaded by Francisco Welter-Schultes, I personally checked that the original copy was identical with the digitized version. This is the original title page of the famous 1758 work which provided the base for modern zoological nomenclature. This image can be taken to illustrate the original work of Carl Linnæus.
context_page_description: Carl Linnaeus, also known after his ennoblement as Carl von Linné, was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy". Many of his writings were in Latin, and his name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnæus.
  Linnaeus was born in the countryside of Småland in southern Sweden. He received most of his higher education at Uppsala University and began giving lectures in botany there in 1730. He lived abroad between 1735 and 1738, where he studied and also published the first edition of his Systema Naturae in the Netherlands. He then returned to Sweden where he became professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala. In the 1740s, he was sent on several journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants and animals. In the 1750s and 1760s, he continued to collect and classify animals, plants, and minerals, while publishing several volumes. He was one of the most acclaimed scientists in Europe at the time of his death.
  Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau sent him the message: "Tell him I know no greater man on earth."
context_section_description: The first edition of Systema Naturae was printed in the Netherlands in 1735. It was a twelve-page work. By the time it reached its 10th edition in 1758, it classified 4,400 species of animals and 7,700 species of plants. People from all over the world sent their specimens to Linnaeus to be included. By the time he started work on the 12th edition, Linnaeus needed a new invention—the index card—to track classifications.
  In Systema Naturae, the unwieldy names mostly used at the time, such as "Physalis annua ramosissima, ramis angulosis glabris, foliis dentato-serratis", were supplemented with concise and now familiar "binomials", composed of the generic name, followed by a specific epithet—in the case given, Physalis angulata. These binomials could serve as a label to refer to the species. Higher taxa were constructed and arranged in a simple and orderly manner. Although the system, now known as binomial nomenclature, was partially developed by the Bauhin brothers (see Gaspard Bauhin and Johann Bauhin) almost 200 years earlier, Linnaeus was the first to use it consistently throughout the work, including in monospecific genera, and may be said to have popularised it within the scientific community.
  After the decline in Linnaeus's health in the early 1770s, publication of editions of Systema Naturae went in two different directions. Another Swedish scientist, Johan Andreas Murray issued the Regnum Vegetabile section separately in 1774 as the Systema Vegetabilium, rather confusingly labelled the 13th edition. Meanwhile a 13th edition of the entire Systema appeared in parts between 1788 and 1793. It was through the Systema Vegetabilium that Linnaeus's work became widely known in England, following its translation from the Latin by the Lichfield Botanical Society as A System of Vegetables (1783–1785).
caption: Title page of the 10th edition of Systema Naturæ (1758)
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