Carl Linnaeus
1707 – 1788
A Classification Junkie
Did King Philip Call Out For Good Soup? This is one of the many mnemonics people use to remember the hierarchy of the classification of living organisms: Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. This classification, used world-wide for centuries in some form and still the basis for the current tree-of-life classification was originally constructed by Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish biologist and physician. He is thus known as "the father of modern taxonomy." Although this basic classification schema is used today, it has changed somewhat since Linnaeus' description as more precise knowledge of living organisms has developed. For example, the highest level, Domain, wasn't added until 1990 to separate all plants and animals (Eukarya) from Bacteria and Archaea—the latter two types of organisms not known to Linnaeus.
The premise of this book is that whatever comes after Homo sapiens will be a species in the genus Homo.
Click on links to other players in my journey below.
Ardi * Aubrey de Grey * Bill Joy * C. Owen Lovejoy * Carl Linneaus * Charles Darwin * CRISPR *
Daniel E. Koshland, Jr * Elizabeth Kolbert * Ernst Mayr * Eugene E. Harris * Gregor Mendel * Henry Markram *
Ian Tattersall * Jean-Baptiste Lamarck * John Markoff * Katherine Pollard * Kevin de Queiroz * Lucy *
McBrearty and Brooks * Miguel Nicolelis * Paul Allen * Paul Berg * R.A.Fisher * Scott Blois * Singularity *
Stephen Jay Gould * Svante Pååbo * Sydney Brenner * Terry Sejnowski * Theodosius Dobzhansky *