Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and legacy of the pioneering Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707 – 1778). The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau once wrote: "Tell him I know no greater man on earth".
The son of a parson, Linnaeus grew up in an impoverished part of Sweden but managed to gain a place at university. He went on to transform biology by making two major innovations. He devised a simpler method of naming species and he developed a new system for classifying plants and animals, a system that became known as the Linnaean hierarchy. He was also one of the first people to grow a banana in Europe.
With
Staffan Muller-Wille University Lecturer in History of Life, Human and Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge
Stella Sandford Professor of Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University, London
and
Steve Jones Senior Research Fellow in Genetics at University College, London
Producer Luke Mulhall