1705-1735

Swedish Naturalist

Peter Artedi has been hailed by early historians as "the father of ichthyology" for his sole published work regarding the classification of fish. Artedi's untimely death (he drowned at the age of 30) cut short a very promising scientific career. Artedi's work was extremely important to Linnaeus (who is most famous for his system of classification of animals) and was used as a template for Carolus Linnaeus' (1707-1778) most famous work, Systema naturae. In fact, nearly every entry from this book dealing with fish has a reference to Artedi's work, which was extremely well thought out and detailed. Artedi and Linnaeus first met at the university and remained good friends throughout their lives.

Peter Artedi was originally born as Petrus Arctaedius in Anundsjö, Sweden, in 1705. His family had strong ties to the clergy, but ultimately, Petrus chose to study science. In 1716, his family moved...