- Pehr Kalm
Pehr Kalm (
March 6 1716 -November 16 1779 ) (inFinland also known as Pietari Kalm and in some English-language translations as Peter Kalm) was a Swedish-Finnish explorer, botanist, naturalist, and agricultural economist. He was one ofCarolus Linnaeus 's most important students. Among his many accomplishments, Kalm can be credited for the first description of theNiagara Falls , written by someone trained as a scientist.Biography
Kalm was born in
Ångermanland ,Sweden , where his parents had taken refuge from Finland during theGreat Northern War . His father died six weeks after his birth. When the hostilities were over, his widowed mother returned with him toNärpes inOstrobothnia , Finland, where Kalm's father had been a Lutheran minister. Kalm studied at theAcademy of Turku from 1735, and from 1740 at theUniversity of Uppsala , where he met the renowned naturalist Carolus Linnaeus and became one of his first students. In Uppsala Kalm became the superintendent of an experimental plantation owned by his patron, Baron Sten Karl Bielke.Kalm did field research in Sweden, Russia and Ukraine from 1742 to 1746, when he was appointed
Docent of Natural History and Economics at the Academy of Turku. In 1747 the Academy elevated him to Professor of Economics, and the same year he was also appointed by Linneaus and theRoyal Swedish Academy of Sciences to travel to North America, to find seeds and plants that might prove useful for agriculture or industry. In particular, they wanted him to bring back the redmulberry , "Morus rubra", in the hope of starting a silk industry in Finland (which then was an integral part of Sweden, a.k.a.Sweden-Finland ).On his journey from Sweden to
Philadelphia , Kalm spent six months in England, where he met many of the important botanists of the day. Kalm arrived inPennsylvania in 1748; there he was befriended by Benjamin Franklin andJohn Bartram . Kalm made the Swedish-Finnish community of Raccoon ( nowSwedesboro ) in southernNew Jersey his base of operations. There he served as the substitute pastor of the local church, and there he married the widow of the former pastor in 1750. He made trips as far west asNiagara Falls and as far north asMontreal andQuebec , before returning in 1751. After his return to Finland to take his post as Professor at Turku Academy, he established botanical gardens inTurku , and taught there until his death in 1771.Legacy
Kalm's journal of his travels was published as "En Resa til Norra America" (Stockholm, 1753–1761). It was translated into German, Dutch, French, and into English in 1770 as "Travels into North America." Another American edition was translated by Adolph B. Benson and published in 1937; it is an important standard reference regarding life in colonial North America. Kalm described not only the flora and fauna of the new world, but the lives of the native Americans and the British and French colonists whom he met.
In his "Species Plantarum," Linnaeus cites Kalm for 90 species, 60 of them new, including the genus "
Kalmia ", which Linnaeus named after Kalm. "Kalmia latifolia " (Mountain-laurel) is the state flower of Pennsylvania and Connecticut.Kalm's
ethnicity andmother tongue became a topic almost a century after his death, during the so called Finland's language strife. It is known that Kalm himself usually signed letters as "Pehr Kalm" and that he was born and raised in the bi-cultural and bi-lingualFinland-Swedish Närpes, and that all his known professional writings were done in Latin and Swedish.Another famous Finnish scientist
Anders Chydenius (1729 - 1803) was a student of Pehr Kalm's. Chydenius was also a knownclergyman and a significantpolitician who wrote the much praised book "The National Gain ", 11 years beforeAdam Smith published his book "The Wealth of Nations ".External links
* [http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=1981 Biography] — the "Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online"
References
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.