author
Pehr Kalm
1716–1779
An explorer, botanist, and keen observer of everyday life, he became one of Carl Linnaeus’s most noted students and carried that curiosity across North America. His travel writings helped introduce European readers to the plants, landscapes, and communities he encountered in the 1700s.
4 Audiobooks
Travels into North America, Volume 2 (of 3)
by Pehr Kalm
Travels into North America, Volume 1 (of 3)
by Pehr Kalm
Travels into North America, Volume 3 (of 3)
by Pehr Kalm
About the author
Born in 1716 in Sweden to Finnish parents and later raised in Finland, Pehr Kalm became a botanist, naturalist, and professor with a strong interest in how plants could be used in farming and daily life. He is often remembered as one of the "apostles" of Carl Linnaeus, the small circle of students sent out to study the natural world in detail.
Kalm is especially known for his journey to North America in the late 1740s, when he traveled through parts of present-day Canada and the American colonies collecting plants and recording careful observations about nature, agriculture, and local society. Those travels fed into his widely read accounts, which gave European audiences a vivid picture of the region and helped build his international reputation.
He later served at the Royal Academy of Turku, where he taught economics in the broad 18th-century sense of the term, including practical agriculture and the management of natural resources. Today he is remembered not only for botanical discoveries but also for the lively, detailed way he wrote about the world around him.