biography
| name: |
Rafinesque, Constantine (Samuel)
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pronunciation:
[rafinesk]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1783–1840)
|
| biography:
| Naturalist, born in Galata, Turkey. The son of a German mother and French father, he went to the USA in 1802 and worked in a Philadelphia counting-house. An amateur naturalist, he travelled to the West, and his work brought him into contact with President Thomas Jefferson. In 1805 he went to Palermo, Sicily, where he engaged in commercial and scientific activities. He returned to the USA in 1815 (arriving naked and penniless after his ship wrecked off Connecticut) and after serving as a tutor in the wealthy New York Livingston family, he obtained a post as professor of botany, natural history, and modern languages at Transylvania University in Lexington, KY. He continued his travels as a naturalist, and in 1826 returned to Philadelphia, where he died in poverty. Drawing on his extensive travels and observations, he had published some 1000 articles and books, but for all their occasional insights - he somewhat prefigured Darwin's ideas on the origin of species - his work often betrayed his lack of formal scientific education and discipline. |
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