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"CONSTANTINE SAMUEL RAFINESQUE, 1783 - 1840
Natural history

"Constantine Samuel Rafinesque-Schmaltz was born in a suburb of Constantinople of a French father and a Greco-German mother in 1783. His boyhood was spent first in Marseilles, France, and after the revolution in Leghorn, Italy. He came to America when he was eighteen and entered the employment of a wealthy merchant of Philadelphia. From there he made many field trips wandering about Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. His interests were boundless. He collected birds, reptiles, fishes and flowers. He stopped in Washington and met Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and others. A deputation of Osage Indians was in Washington at the same time, and he entered into conversation with them and wrote a small dictionary. In May 1818, Rafinesque set out for the west. The journey to Philadelphia and Lancaster was made by stage. From Lancaster he walked over the Allegheny mountains, through Columbia, York, Chambersburg, Bedford, Greensburg and on to Pittsburgh where he contracted with Cramer & Spear booksellers to publish a proposed map of the Ohio River. In May 1819 he delivered the map and received one hundred dollars for his services. Rafinesque has been called an "eccentric genius," "an arrant lunatic," "greatest field botanist of his time" and more by the many public figures whom he met in his travels in America during 1802-1805 and from 18l5 until his death in a Philadelphia garret in 1840. He wrote about 939 articles and books on a wide range of subjects, but the great majority were in the fields of botany and zoology."

Hunt Institute at Carnegie Mellon University

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