Elisabeth Christina von Linné (June 14, 1743 – April 15, 1782) was a Swedish botanist, daughter of

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné,#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. was a Swedish biologist and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming o ...

and Sara Elisabeth Moræa.Family life
, Uppsala universitet, 2008. Läst den 4 maj 2013.

Life

There is no direct information about the education of Elisabeth Christina von Linné, as it is not clearly mentioned anywhere. However, as her brother was given home tuition in preparation for university studies, and she is confirmed to have socialized with the students of her father, who were also tutored in the family home, it is seen as likely that she was given home tuition by the same teachers as her brother and her father's students, perhaps also with them, which was not uncommon in Sweden at the time. She was acquainted with several of her father's students, among them Erik Gustaf Lidbeck and

Daniel Solander Daniel Carlsson Solander or Daniel Charles Solander (19 February 1733 – 13 May 1782) was a Sweden, Swedish naturalist and an Apostles of Linnaeus, apostle of Carl Linnaeus. Solander was the first university-educated scientist to set foot o ...

, the latter of whom she reportedly wished to marry, but as he did not return from his expedition, the marriage never took place. Linné married major Carl Fredrik Bergencrantz in 1764 and had two children. However, she left her husband and moved back with her parents a couple of years after her wedding because she had been subjected to spousal abuse: she died at the age of 39, and her children also died before adulthood. Her mother blamed her early death upon the abuse she had been subjected to while married.

Scientific activity

Linné is referred to as the first female botanist in Sweden in a modern sense, despite not having received any formal education. It was she who first described the optic phenomenon in which the '' Tropaeolum majus'' appears to send out small bursts of lightning, now named the ''Elizabeth Linnæus Phenomenon'' (or, in German, ) after her. She published her observations on the topic in a paper for the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1762, aged 19. The paper is called ("Concerning the flickering of the Indian crass"). This paper came to the notice of the English doctor, scientist and poet, Erasmus Darwin. He included a reference to it in his "The botanic garden, part II, containing the loves of the plants" (1789) in which he also reported a confirmation of the phenomenon by M. Haggren, a lecturer in natural history who had published his findings in Paris in 1788. The poets

William Wordsworth William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poetry, Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romanticism, Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication ''Lyrical Balla ...

and

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge ( ; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets with his friend William Wordsworth ...

read Darwin's accounts early in their careers and, influenced by these accounts, they referred to flashing flowers in their poems, Wordsworth in "I wandered lonely as a cloud" also called "Daffodils" ('They flash upon that inward eye') and Coleridge in his "Lines Written At Shurton Bars..." ('Flashes the golden-coloured flower / A fair electric flame'). Thus Elizabeth Linnaeus came, through Darwin, to influence the pioneers of English Romantic poetry.Fred Blick, ″Wordsworth, Coleridge, Science and Flashing Flowers: The Influence of Elizabeth Linnaeus and Erasmus Darwin″, https://www.academia.edu/12902335/Wordsworth_Coleridge_Science_and_Flashing_Flowers_The_Influence_of_Elizabeth_Linnaeus_and_Erasmus_Darwin

Life

Scientific activity

References

Further reading