In the 18th century, the Swedish naturalist and physician Carl Linnaeus introduced the scientific system of classifying plants and animals that is used all over the world to this day. Under this system, each living thing is assigned a name consisting of two Latin words. The first word is the name of the genus, and the second, the species. The classification of living things is called taxonomy. In 1737, Linnaeus published the first edition of his book titled Systema Naturae or System of Nature. Over the years, Linnaeus continued to develop his ideas and add new species so that the book grew in a period of about 30 years from 12 outsize pages in its first edition, to 2400 pages in its twelfth edition. This was the first serious attempt ever made to document all of our planet's species. It was a huge effort and it won Linnaeus acclaim as the 'Father of Taxonomy .
He was famous as a mathematician and geographer. Eratosthenes produced a reliable, logical method to discover prime numbers. It's known as the sieve of Eratosthenes, and is still important in modern number theory in an updated form. Assuming that the Earth was a sphere, Eratosthenes calculated its size with good accuracy. He also calculated the tilt of Earth's axis fairly accurately. Eratosthenes produced the first map of the world which used meridian lines and parallel lines. These were similar to our modern lines of latitude and longitude. This great scientist can be said to have invented geography. In fact, today we still use the word he invented for this new discipline. Geo' was Greek for Earth' and 'graphy' meant 'field of study." Eratosthenes also wrote books on philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, history, comedy, and poetry. His all-round knowledge made him the ideal choice for the most prestigious job an academic could en