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Constantine Samuel Rafinesque-Schmaltz (October 22 1783-September 18 1840) was a nineteenth-century polymath who led a chaotic life.

Many would call him a genius, but also an eccentric, sometimes close to insanity. He was very successful in various fields of knowledge; zoologist, botanist, malacologist, meteorologist, writer, evolutionist, polyglot, translator. He wrote prolifically on such diverse topics as anthropology, biology, geology, and linguistics; but was honored in none during his lifetime. Today, it is generally recognized that this genius was far ahead of his time.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Selected works 3 Correspondence 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Biography

Rafinesque was born in Galata, a suburb of Constantinople, of a French father and mother of German descent. He spent his youth in Marseilles, France and was mostly self-educated. By the age of twelve, he had learned botanical Latin and had collected plants for a herbarium.

In 1802, at the age of nineteen, he went to America but in 1805 returned again to Europe and settled in Palermo, Sicily, where he became so successful in trade that he could retire by age twenty-five and devote his time entirely to natural history. He also worked for a time as secretary to the American consul. During his stay in Sicily he studied plants and fishes, naming many of each. In 1815, after his son (named after Carolus Linnaeus) had died, he left his common-law spouse and returned to America. He lost all his books (50 boxes) and all his specimens (including more than 60,000 shells), when the ship Union, registered in Malta, foundered near the coast of Connecticut on 2 November 1815.

In New York he became a founding member of the newly established "Lyceum of Natural History". By 1818, he had collected and named more than 250 new species of plants and animals. Slowly he was rebuilding his collection of objects from nature.

In 1819 he became professor of botany at Transylvania University, Lexington (Kentucky), teaching French and Italian as well. He started at once describing all the new species of plants and animals he encountered. In 1817 his book Florula Ludoviciana, had drawn much criticism from fellow botanists, causing his writing further to be ignored. He was considered as the most erratic student of higher plants. In the spring of 1826 he left the university, after quarreling with its president. A legend later developed that Rafinesque placed a curse on the University when departing. Shortly afterwards, the university's president, Horace Holley, died from yellow fever and the original main building of the university (at Gratz Park site) was destroyed in a fire.

Rafinesque left for Philadelphia without employment. He gave public lectures and continued publishing, mostly at his own expense. His book Medical Flora, a manual of the Medical Botany of the United States of North America (1828-1830) became his most successful work. In Herbarium rafinesquianum, he described numerous new plants. He also became interested in the collections of Lewis and Clark. Among them, he gave a scientific name to the Black-tailed Prairie Dog (Cynomys ludovicianus), the White-footed Mouse (Peromyscus leucopus) and the Mule Deer (Odocoileus hemionus).

In the books he published between 1836 and 1838 he proposed hundreds of new genera and thousands of new species in the major floristic regions of the world. However most of these names were not accepted by the scientific community.

His early conclusion that the categories called species and genera are man-made generalizations which have no physical existence led to his deep appreciation of variation in plants. He understood that such variation, through time, will lead to the development of what we call new species. But he had no explanation for the cause of variation, though he did consider hybridity a possible mechanism and, without calling it that, he had what appears to be some perception of mutation. Hence, he never developed a theory of evolution earlier than Darwin, as sometimes has been claimed, because Rafinesque had no understanding of natural selection and his understanding of geological time was far too shallow.

In 1836 he published a document announced as his own translation of the Walam Olum, a Lenape migration story. This has since been branded a hoax, and it clearly is not an authentic Indian document. However, having been many times the victim of practical jokes by others, Rafinesque may himself have been the victim of a hoax rather than the hoaxer.

He died of stomach cancer in Philadelphia. He was buried there by his friends in Ronaldson's cemetery. His considerable collections were sold as junk or destroyed. In March 1924 what was thought to be his remains were brought back to Transylvania University to rest in a tomb under a stone marked by the words "Honor to whom honor is overdue."

In 1841 Thomas Nuttall proposed, in his honor, the genus name Rafinesquia, (family Asteraceae), with two species. Rafinesque himself had proposed this name twice, but was each time turned down. Asa Gray named in 1853 the second species.

• Rafinesquia californica Nutt. (California Plumeseed, California Chicory)
• Rafinesquia neomexicana A.Gray (Desert Chicory, Plumeseed)

His scientific work has been gaining more and more recognition in recent years. He was an overly enthusiastic, but accurate observer driven by a monomaniacal desire to name every object he encountered in nature.

The standard botanical author abbreviation Raf. is applied to species he described.

[edit] Selected works

• Specchio delle scienze, Palermo 1814
• Analyse de la nature, Palermo 1815 (outlining a new system of classification)
• Florula ludoviciana, 1817
• Neogenyton, 1825
• Medical Flora, a manual of the Medical Botany of the United States of North America (1828-1830)
• Atlantic Journal and Friend of Knowledge
• A life of Travels, 1836
• New flora and botany of North America (four parts) (1836-1838)
• Alsographia americana, 1838
• Sylva tellurana, 1838

[edit] Correspondence

• Betts, Edwin M., "The Correspondence between Constantine Samuel Rafinesque and Thomas Jefferson." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 87, No. 5, 1944.
• Boewe, Charles. "Editing Rafinesque Holographs: the Case of the [Charles Wilkins] Short Letters." Filson Club History Quarterly, Vol. 54, 1980.

[edit] References

• Black, Glenn A., et al.. 1954. Walam Olum, or: Red Score, the Migration Legend of the Lenni Lenape, or Delaware Indians, a New Translation, Interpreted by Linguistic, Historical, Archaeological, Ethnological, and Physical Anthropological Studies. Indiana Historical Society. Indianapolis, IN.
• Boewe, Charles. (Ed.). 1982. Fitzpatrick's Rafinesque: A sketch of his life with bibliography, revised by Charles Boewe. M & S Press, Weston, MA.
• Boewe, Charles. (Ed.). 2001. Mantissa: A supplement to Fitzpatrick's Rafinesque. M & S Press, Providence, RI.
• Boewe, Charles. (Ed.). 2003. Profiles of Rafinesque. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, TN.
• Boewe, Charles. (Ed.). 2005. A C.S. Rafinesque Anthology. McFarland & Co., Jefferson, NC.
• Sterling, K. B. (Ed.). 1978. Rafinesque. Autobiography and Lives. Arno Press, NY

[edit] External links

• Fishes sketched by Rafinesque
• Fishes first described by Rafinesque
• Rafinesque’s Big-eared Bat
• IPNI on Rafinesque (Raf.)de:Constantine S. Rafinesque-Schmaltz

es:Constantine Samuel Rafinesque fr:Constantine Samuel Rafinesque nl:Constantine Samuel Rafinesque-Schmaltz