Pehr Kalm
Encyclopedia
Pehr Kalm (in Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

 also known as Pietari Kalm and in some English-language translations as Peter Kalm) was a Swedish-Finnish explorer, botanist
Botany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...

, naturalist
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...

, and agricultural economist
Agricultural economics
Agricultural economics originally applied the principles of economics to the production of crops and livestock — a discipline known as agronomics. Agronomics was a branch of economics that specifically dealt with land usage. It focused on maximizing the crop yield while maintaining a good soil...

. He was one of most important apostles
Apostles of Linnaeus
The Apostles of Linnaeus were a group of students who carried out botanical and zoological expeditions throughout the world that were either devised or approved by botanist Carl Linnaeus. The expeditions took place during the latter half of the 18th century and the students were designated...

 of Carl Linnaeus. Among his many accomplishments, Kalm can be credited for the first description of Niagara Falls
Niagara Falls
The Niagara Falls, located on the Niagara River draining Lake Erie into Lake Ontario, is the collective name for the Horseshoe Falls and the adjacent American Falls along with the comparatively small Bridal Veil Falls, which combined form the highest flow rate of any waterfalls in the world and has...

 written by someone trained as a scientist.

Biography

Kalm was born in Ångermanland
Ångermanland
' is a historical province or landskap in the north of Sweden. It borders to Medelpad, Jämtland, Lapland, Västerbotten and the Gulf of Bothnia. The name "Ångermanland" comes from the Old Norse "anger", which means "deep fjord" and refers to the deep mouth of the river Ångermanälven...

, where his parents had taken refuge from Finland during the Great Northern War
Great Northern War
The Great Northern War was a conflict in which a coalition led by the Tsardom of Russia successfully contested the supremacy of the Swedish Empire in northern Central Europe and Eastern Europe. The initial leaders of the anti-Swedish alliance were Peter I the Great of Russia, Frederick IV of...

. His father died six weeks after his birth. When the hostilities were over, his widowed mother returned with him to Närpes
Närpes
Närpes is a town and municipality of Finland.The municipality is located in the province of Western Finland and is part of the Ostrobothnia region. The town has a population of and covers an area of of which is water. The population density is ....

 in Ostrobothnia
Ostrobothnia (region)
Ostrobothnia is a region of Finland. It is located in Western Finland. It borders the regions Central Ostrobothnia, Southern Ostrobothnia, and Satakunta and is one of the four regions making up the historical province of Ostrobothnia....

, where Kalm's father had been a Lutheran minister. Kalm studied at the Academy of Turku from 1735, and from 1740 at the University of Uppsala, where he became one of the first students of the renowned naturalist Carolus Linnaeus
Carolus Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus , also known after his ennoblement as , was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology...

. 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
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, and Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

 from 1742 to 1746, when he was appointed Docent
Docent
Docent is a title at some European universities to denote a specific academic appointment within a set structure of academic ranks below professor . Docent is also used at some universities generically for a person who has the right to teach...

 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 Linnaeus and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences or Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. The Academy is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization which acts to promote the sciences, primarily the natural sciences and mathematics.The Academy was founded on 2...

 (which he had been a member of since 1745) 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 red mulberry in the hope of starting a silk industry
Silk
Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The best-known type of silk is obtained from the cocoons of the larvae of the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori reared in captivity...

 in Finland (which was then an integral part of Sweden, today also known as Sweden-Finland
Sweden-Finland
Sweden–Finland is an outdated Finnish historiographical term referring to the Swedish Kingdom from the Kalmar Union to the Napoleonic wars, or the period from the 14th to the 18th century. In 1809 the realm was split and the eastern half came to constitute the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland, in...

).

On his journey from Sweden to Philadelphia, Kalm spent six months in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, where he met many of the important botanists of the day. Kalm arrived in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

 in 1748; there he was befriended by Benjamin Franklin and John Bartram
John Bartram
*Hoffmann, Nancy E. and John C. Van Horne, eds., America’s Curious Botanist: A Tercentennial Reappraisal of John Bartram 1699-1777. Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 243. ....

. Kalm made the Swedish-Finnish community of Raccoon (now Swedesboro) in southern New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

 his base of operations. Raccoon had been one of the settlements established as part of the former Swedish colony of New Sweden
New Sweden
New Sweden was a Swedish colony along the Delaware River on the Mid-Atlantic coast of North America from 1638 to 1655. Fort Christina, now in Wilmington, Delaware, was the first settlement. New Sweden included parts of the present-day American states of Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania....

. There he served as the substitute pastor of Trinity Church
Trinity Church (Swedesboro, New Jersey)
Trinity Church is a historic church on the northwest corner of Church Street and King's Highway in Swedesboro, New Jersey ....

, the local Swedish Lutheran
Church of Sweden
The Church of Sweden is the largest Christian church in Sweden. The church professes the Lutheran faith and is a member of the Porvoo Communion. With 6,589,769 baptized members, it is the largest Lutheran church in the world, although combined, there are more Lutherans in the member churches of...

 church. Kalm subsequently married the widow of Johan Sandin, the former pastor who had died. He remained in Raccoon until May 19, 1749.

He made trips as far west as Niagara Falls and as far north as Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

 and Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

 before returning in 1751. After his return to Finland to take his post as Professor at the Turku Academy, he established botanical gardens in Turku
Turku
Turku is a city situated on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River. It is located in the region of Finland Proper. It is believed that Turku came into existence during the end of the 13th century which makes it the oldest city in Finland...

, 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, and French, and into English in 1770 as Travels into North America. Kalm described not only the flora and fauna of the New World, but the lives of the Native Americans and the British
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...

 and French
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

 colonists whom he met.

An American edition was translated by Swedish-American scholar and literary historian Adolph B. Benson (1881–1961). It was published as Peter Kalm's Travels in North America: The English Version of 1770 (Wilson-Erickson Inc. 1937). It has become an important standard reference regarding life in colonial North America and has been in continuous print in several updated editions.

In his Species Plantarum, Linnaeus cites Kalm for 90 species, 60 of them new, including the genus Kalmia
Kalmia
Kalmia is a genus of about 8 species of evergreen shrubs from 0.2–5 m tall, in the family Ericaceae. They are native to North America and Cuba. They grow in acidic soils, with different species in wet acid bog habitats and dry, sandy soils Kalmia is a genus of about 8 species of evergreen shrubs...

, which Linnaeus named after Kalm. Kalmia latifolia
Kalmia latifolia
Kalmia latifolia, commonly called Mountain-laurel or Spoonwood, is a species of flowering plant in the blueberry family, Ericaceae, that is native to the eastern United States. Its range stretches from southern Maine south to northern Florida, and west to Indiana and Louisiana. Mountain-laurel is...

(Mountain-laurel) is the state flower of Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

Kalm's ethnicity and mother tongue became a topic almost a century after his death, during Finland's so-called language strife. Kalm himself usually signed letters as "Pehr Kalm", and he was born and raised in the bi-cultural and bi-lingual Finland-Swedish
Finland-Swedish
Finland Swedish is a general term for the closely related cluster of dialects of Swedish spoken in Finland by Swedish-speaking Finns as their mother tongue...

 Närpes, and all his known professional writings were done in Latin and Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

. Another famous Swedish scientist from territories that later became Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

, Anders Chydenius
Anders Chydenius
Anders Chydenius was the leading classical liberal of Nordic history. Born in Sotkamo, Ostrobothnia, Sweden and having studied under Pehr Kalm at the Royal Academy of Åbo, Chydenius became a priest, Enlightenment philosopher and member of the Swedish Riksdag of the Estates.The world's first...

, was a student of Pehr Kalm's.

Other sources

  • Benson, Adolph B. Peter Kalm's Travels in North America: The English Version of 1770 (v. 1 & 2) (Dover Publishing. 1987) ISBN 978-0486254234
  • Robbins, Paula Ivaska The Travels of Peter Kalm: Finnish-Swedish Naturalist Through Colonial North America, 1748-1751(Purple Mountain Press; 2007) ISBN 978-1930098800

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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