Professor Olaus Rudbeck: How He Made Botany a Popular with Upsala University Students

"He prepared a public display of his collection and put together a lecture about the collection of new seeds and roots he had brought from his travels abroad.

But the students at the time thought botany was a topic for old ladies or apothecaries or pharmacists, and they derided anyone with interest in the subject by calling them 'a grass reader.'"

September 17, 1702

On this day, the Swedish scientist and writer, professor of medicine at Uppsala University, Olaus Rudbeck, died.

 

The following story about Olaus Rudbeck was published in an article called The Atlantica and its Author by Frederica Rowan.

When Olaus was first appointed assistant professor of medicine at the

University of Upsala, he was quite intent on sharing everything he had learned about botany.

He prepared a public display of his collection and put together a lecture about the collection of new seeds and roots he had brought from his travels abroad.

 

But, the students at the time thought botany was a topic for old ladies, apothecaries, or pharmacists, and they derided anyone with interest in the subject by calling them "a grass reader."

Olaus, who was clearly out of touch with the perception of botany, expected to find his lecture room filled. He waited "hour after hour. but not one person showed up.

Then Frederica Rowan wrote this about Olaus Rudbeck, and it is just so incredibly moving:

His disappointment was great; for once, the brave spirit gave way, and he burst into tears.

But, recovering from his momentary weakness, he determined, in spite of the existing indifference, to do for botany what he had done for anatomy.

He instantly set about converting a piece of ground which he possessed in Upsala into a botanical garden, with hot-houses, and bowers, and shady walks, and parterres resplendent with the variegated hues of the newly imported plants, to attract by beauty those whom science lacked charms to lure.

And when his task was completed, and knots of admiring visitors gathered round him in his garden, he would assume the character of a peripatetic lecturer, and instill knowledge into them, even against their will: thus breaking the ground for Linnaeus, whose fame was to outshine his own in the annals of botany, and laying the foundations of the very garden, the renown of which was to become world-wide under his great successor.


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Olaus Rudbeck Engraving
Olaus Rudbeck Engraving
Olaus Rudbeck, painted in 1696 by Martin Mijtens the Elder
Olaus Rudbeck, painted in 1696 by Martin Mijtens the Elder

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