300th Anniversary of Carl Linnaeus

On the 300th anniversary of Carl Linnaeus' birth (May 2007), we are publishing a translation of Prof. A.K. Skvortsov's article of 2002 on Linnaeus and his heritage. The author believes that major ideas of C. Linnaeus have withstood the test of time and continue to provide the ideological foundation for systematics. The emphasis is laid on the seamless transition of Linnaean systematics to the rails of evolutionism as well as proximity of Linnaean understanding of species to the contemporary populational-genetic model.