Charles Linnaeus was born May 13, 1707, in a country place named Roshult in Smaland, near Skane, Sweden.  He was called Charles after the well known Swedish knight errant, King Charles XII., then at the height of his renown.

The natural beauty of his native place, with its verdure-clad hills, its stately trees, and sparkling brooks fringed with mosses and flowers, inspired the boy Linnaeus with a love of nature and a devotion to her teachings which tinged the current of his whole life.  He was destined by his parents for the ministry, and in accordance with their wish was sent to the Vexio Academy ("gymnasium").  Here the dull theological studies interfered so much with his study of nature that he would have felt lost but for the sympathy of Dr. Rothman, one of his teachers, a graduate of Harderwyk University, Holland, who had been a pupil of Boerhaave (the most eminent physician and scientist of his day), and been much impressed by his scientific teachings.

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Dr. Rothman took a great interest in Linnaeus, and assured his father that he would prove a great success financially and otherwise as a physician (an occupation whose duties then included a study of all existing sciences).  The father was satisfied, but dreaded the effect the announcement of such a career would have on the mother, whose ambition had been to see her son’s name among the long list of clergymen of the family who had been ministers to the neighboring church of Stentrohult.  She finally yielded, and the best possible use was made by Linnaeus of Dr. Rothman’s tuition.  Latin, then the mother tongue of all scientists and scholars, he wrote and spoke fluently.

At the age of twenty Linnaeus entered the University of Lund, and remained there a year.  Here he formed the acquaintance of a medical man, a teacher in the university, who opened his home and his library to him, and took him on his botanical excursions and professional visits.  Some time later, on Dr. Rothman’s advice, Linnaeus entered the University of Upsala, then the most celebrated university of Northern Europe.  His parents were able to spare him but one hundred silver thalers for his expenses.  At the end of a year his money was spent, his clothing and shoes were worn out, and he was without prospects of obtaining a scholarship.  When things were at their gloomiest he accidentally entered into a discussion with a stranger in the botanical garden, who turned out to be a clergyman scientist named Celsius.  Celsius, while staying at Upsala, had conceived the plan of given a botanical description of biblical plants.  Having learned that Linnaeus had a herbarium of 600 plants, he took the young man under his protection, and opened up to him his home and library.

While studying in this library, his observations regarding the sexes in plants, hitherto in a chaotic state, took form, stimulated by an abstract published in a German journal of Vaillant’s views, and before the end of 1729 the basis of the sexual system had appeared in manuscript.  This treatise having been seen by a member of the university faculty, Linnaeus was invited to fill a temporary vacancy, and lectured with great success therein one and a half years.  Meanwhile the foundation of the celebrated treatises afterward published on the sexual system of classification and on plant nomenclature had been laid.