Commemoration of Carl Linnaeus end of his life in 1778, Carl Linnaeus had become one of the most acclaimed scientists in Europe, the first civilian in Sweden to be dubbed a knight of the Order of the Polar Star (1753) and ennobled as Carl von Linné (1761). The Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote during Linnaeus' lifetime: "I know no greater man on earth." The German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe would later write: "With the exception of Shakespeare and Spinoza, I know no one among the no longer living who has influenced me more strongly." Swedish author August Strindberg wrote: "Linnaeus was in reality
Carl Linnaeus the 18th century expansion of natural history knowledge, Linnaeus also developed what became known as the "Linnaean taxonomy"; the system of scientific classification now widely used in the biological sciences. A previous zoologist Rumphius (1627–1702) had more or less approximated the Linnaean system and his material contributed to the later development of the binomial scientific classification by Linnaeus. The Linnaean system classified nature within a nested hierarchy, starting with three kingdoms. Kingdoms were divided into classes and they, in turn, into orders, and thence into genera ("singular:" genus), which were divided into species ("singular:" species). Below the rank of species