C. S. (Constantine Samuel) Rafinesque

Born near Constantinople in 1783 and raised largely in Europe, Rafinesque became a self-taught scholar with unusually wide interests. He eventually settled in the United States, where he worked as a botanist, zoologist, and teacher, and built a reputation for tireless collecting, classifying, and publishing.

His output was enormous: reference works and articles on plants, fishes, shells, and many other subjects, along with writing on language, ancient history, and other fields far beyond natural science. He taught at Transylvania University in Kentucky for part of the 1820s, though his independence and unconventional style often put him at odds with other scholars.

Rafinesque died in 1840, having spent much of his life underappreciated. Later generations came to value both the scale of his work and his role in describing North American species, and he remains one of the most unusual and prolific figures in early American science.