What Linnaeus Saw
A Scientist and His Quest to Name and Catalog Every Living Thing
In What Linnaeus Saw, Karen Magnuson Beil chronicles Linnaeus’s life and career in readable, relatable prose. As a boy, Linnaeus hated school and had little interest in taking up the religious profession his family had chosen. Though he struggled through Latin and theology classes, Linnaeus was an avid student of the natural world and explored the school’s gardens and woods, transfixed by the properties of different plants. At twenty-five, on a solo expedition to the Scandinavian Mountains, Linnaeus documented and described dozens of new species. As a medical student in Holland, he moved among leading scientific thinkers and had access to the best collections of plants and animals in Europe. What Linnaeus found was a world with no consistent system…
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October 1, 2019Karen Magnuson Beil has worked as a news reporter and science writer. Her work takes her on exciting adventures—such as paddling through a marsh with a muskrat farmer and climbing a tower to “interview” New York’s first reintroduced bald eagle. Beil lives in Saratoga Springs, New York.
