ABSTRACT
David Starr Jordan published ‘The history of Ichthyology’ in 1902, and dated the origin of Ichthyology back to Aristotle (383-322 BC) with the publication of ‘The history of animals’ (Aristotle ca. 350 BC). However, Jordan (1902) and others after him (Wheeler 1987) elected Petri Artedi (1705-1734) as the father of Ichthyology. Wheeler (1987) enumerated a series of facts highlighting the signifi cance of Artedi’s work to ichthyology: (i) revision of previous literature on fi shes, (ii) clarifi cation of fi sh species synonyms, (iii) presentation of a synopsis on how to deal with genera, (iv) accurate description of more than 70 European fi sh species, (v) introduction of a polynomial classifi cation system. This classifi cation system is considered Artedi’s most important achievement, because it is the precursor of the binomial system proposed and used consistently by Carolus Linnæus after the 10th edition of ‘Systema Naturæ’ published in 1758 (Wheeler 1987). Artedi’s book ‘Ichthyologia cluding opera omnia the piscibus’ was published posthumously in 1738, after his premature death, which includes two unpublished works ‘Bibliotheca Ichthyologica’ and ‘Philosophia Ichthyologia’ (Wheeler 1987). Carolus Linnæus was the editor of Artedi’s seminal book and acquired almost all of his knowledge on fi shes from Artedi’s work (Jordan 1902).
