The Great Bird Book of Olof Rudbeck the Younger

The Great Bird Book of Olof Rudbeck the Younger

Olof Rudbeck the Younger (1660–1740) was born and educated in Uppsala, Sweden where he received an excellent education from his father and other skilled teachers. He studied medicine and his dissertation De propagatione plantarum, published in 1686, is considered to mark the birth of modern botany in Sweden. He received 100 ducats from Queen Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden (1656–93) for the work and was made an assistant professor at Uppsala University the same year.
Rudbeck spent the next few years studying botany in England, Germany, and Holland where he was promoted to Doctor of Medicine at Utrecht University in 1690 before returning to Sweden the following year to assume his responsibilities at Uppsala University, where he succeeded his father as professor of medicine. His thesis, Dissertatio de fundamentali plantarum notitia rite acquirenda, calls for a formalized system for naming plants, something that would be realized by a student of his a generation later: Carl Linnaeus (1707–78), inventor of the modern system of binomial nomenclature for naming organisms.
It was during this time that Rudbeck began work on his unpublished Great Bird Book and the incredibly accurate and naturalist drawings reveal his hidden talents as an artist. The book would serve as the basis for the revolutionary series of lectures he gave on ornithology between 1772 and 1731, the first of their kind in Sweden. Rudbeck is regarded as a pioneer of botany and ornithology and in recognition of his accomplishments and those of his deceased father, he was ennobled in 1719 by Queen Ulrika Eleonora the Younger (1688–1741).