TLS December 21 & 28 2007
from Matthew Cobb's review "Polymath of Style" of Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon's Oeuvres , edited by Stephane Schmitt and Cedric Cremiere: This year marked the tercentenary of the birth of two of the greatest naturalists of the eighteenth century - the Swede Carl Linnaeus (1707-78) and the Frenchman Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon (1707-88). In April, Linnaeus's 300th birthday was celebrated in the scientific journals, museums put on special exhibits, newspapers published articles about his influence. But for Buffon's birthday, in September, there were no candles on the cake. Even in France, not much fus was made - a conference in Dijon, a few displays at the Museum national d'Histoire naturelle, a flurry of publishing, and that was it. * Buffon had a long-running dispute with Linnaeus over the validity of the multi-level classification outlined in Systema Naturae , which permeated the whole of L'Histoire naturelle . Buffon argued that ...