Carl Linnaeus was born on May 23 1707 in the village of Råshult, near Älmhult in Småland. Soon after his birth the family moved to the nearby village of Stenbrohult, where his father Nicolaus was a minister. Nicolaus had adopted the family name as a latinization of the Swedish word "Lind", meaning "linden tree". Linnaeus got his elementary education in Växjö, and his father originally intended him to become a priest. The town doctor had however noticed Linnaeus interest in botany, and convinced Nicolaus that Carl had a future in medicine. In 1728 he was enrolled in the university of Uppsala. In 1729 he published a thesis on plant reproduction which attracted the interests of his professors. He became their protégé, and was offered positions tutoring his fellow students. He also moved into the house of medicine professor Olof Rudbeck, where he tutored the youngest children of the family.

In 1732 was given a grant for an expedition to Lapland in northern Sweden. The expedition lasted 6 months, during which Linnaeus traveled some 2,000 km (1,200 mi). On his journey he gathered information about the different plants, minerals, animals and Sami culture of Lapland, and in the subsequent publication Flora Lapponica he described some 100 previously undescribed species. Flora Lapponica was also the first time he used his new ideas about the nomenclature and systematization of species, making it the first proto-modern flora.

In 1734 Linnaeus went to Harderwijk in the Netherlands to pursue his doctoral studies. However, as his doctoral thesis was already written before his departure, he was awarded his doctorate within two weeks of reaching Harderwijk. He stayed abroad for four years, travelling to London, Oxford, Paris and Amsterdam before returning back to Sweden in 1738.

Upon his return to Sweden he married Sara Elisabeth Moræa on her family farm Svedens gård near Falun. The couple had four daughters and a son who survived until adulthood. During his first years back in Sweden Linnaeus opened a medicinal practice in Stockholm. However, in 1740 he was offered a position as professor of medicine at Uppsala, and quickly accepted the job. As a perk of his position he was granted a professional residence in central Uppsala, where the Linnaeus family stayed for the next 37 years. Next to the house were the university gardens, which Linnaeus quickly expanded to one of the most spectacular of its kind. The family also acquired several farms around Uppsala, out of which Hammarby, where the family spent their summers, is the most famous.

He was a very popular teacher, often taking his students on excursions around the Uppsala countryside. During his years as professor he also made several longer expeditions around Sweden to Västergötland, Gotland, Öland and Scania. In 1750 he was named rector, or principal, of Uppsala University. In 1757 Carl Linnaeus was ennobled and adopted the name "von Linné", which is today the name most commonly used in Sweden. Linnaeus died on January 10th 1778 in Hammarby, where he also asked to be buried. Contrary to his wishes he was buried in Uppsala Cathedral. His position as professor went to his son, Carl the younger. However, the son died only a few years later in 1783, without getting married or leaving any heir. Linnaeus' collections of manuscripts and naturalia was inherited by his wife, who subsequently sold them. The purchaser, Joseph Banks, brought the collections to England where he founded the Linnean Society of London. In 2009 much of the Linnean heritage was nominated to become a UNESCO World Heritage.

Linnaeus' two largest contributions to natural science where his way of organizing different species known as the Linnaean taxonomy, as well as his system of naming species, known as the Binomial nomenclature. His systematization of plants is based on the number of stalks and pistils of the plant, dividing them into 24 classes. Compared to the other systems used during this era, the Linnaean taxonomy was very easy to learn and apply, and therefore became a milestone in popularizing biology as a scientific discipline.

The Binomial nomenclature is a way of giving scientific names to species using two names, the first one identifying its genus, and the latter the specific species within the genus, such as Homo sapiens for human beings. Until Linnaeus invented his nomenclature there were no coherent international naming convention of species, which prevented the development of an international biologic scientific literature. While Linnaeus' taxonomy has latter been replaced by a cladistic system, based on the genetics and common ancestry of different species, his naming convention is still used today.

• Laponia 1732
• Bergslagen 1733–1734
• Dalarna 1734
• Öland and Gotland 1741
• Västergötland 1746
• Scania 1749