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Carl Linnaeus, the 'father of taxonomy' was born in Sweden in 1707. His teachers didn’t think he showed much promise academically (though clearly he was obsessed with plants) and urged him to take up a practical trade like shoemaking.
"Linnaeus’ most notable work, Systema Naturae, was first published in 1735. In it, he classified plants based on their sexual parts, upsetting many who criticized the book for its ‘sexually explicit’ nature.
Although Linnaeus’s system was not the first to use this ‘binomial nomenclature,’ his was the most consistent and was presented at a time when the need for a workable naming system was urgent, due to the large numbers of plants and animals being brought back to Europe from Asia, Africa, and the Americas."
from Pacific Horticulture, July/August/September, 2007, 68(3):7
available in the Reading Room.
The Library has several biographies of Linnaeus including: The Compleat Naturalist by William T. Stearn (QH 44.B54 1971).
The illustration is taken from a British work by Thomas Martyn published in 1788 that explains the system to the lay person. The illustrations by F. P. Nodder, botanic painter to Queen Charlotte, were hand colored from copper engraved plates.