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
Spider taxonomy the number of species in the families is bound to change and can never reflect the present status with total accuracy. Nevertheless, the species numbers given here are useful as a guideline – see the table of families at the end of the article. Spider taxonomy can be traced to the work of Swedish naturalist Carl Alexander Clerck, who in 1757 published the first binomial scientific names of some 67 spiders species in his "Svenska Spindlar" ("Swedish Spiders"), one year before Linnaeus named over 30 spiders in his "Systema Naturae". In the ensuing 250 years, thousands more species have been