About Constantine Samuel Rafinesque
Constantine Samuel Rafinesque-Schmaltz (French pronunciation: [kɔ̃stɑ̃tin(ə) samɥɛl ʁafinɛsk(ə)ʃmalts]) (22 October 1783 – 18 September 1840) was a French polymath of the early 19th century. Born near Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire, he was self-educated in France. As a young man, Rafinesque-Schmaltz traveled to the United States, eventually settling in Ohio in 1815. There, he made significant contributions to botany, zoology, and the study of prehistoric earthworks in North America. Beyond his previous extensive work in Europe, he also contributed to the study of ancient Mesoamerican linguistics. In 1836, Rafinesque was the first person to use the term Taíno as a way of referring to the Indigenous peoples of the Greater Antilles. Rafinesque had a reputation as an eccentric and erratic genius. He was an autodidact who excelled in various fields of knowledge, as a zoologist, botanist, writer and polyglot. He wrote prolifically on such diverse topics as anthropology, biology, geology, and linguistics, but was honored in none of these fields during his lifetime. An outcast in the American scientific community, his submissions were automatically rejected by leading journals. Among his theories were that ancestors of Native Americans had migrated by the Bering Sea from Asia to North America, and that the Americas were populated by Black Indigenous peoples at the time of European contact. The standard author abbreviation Raf. is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name. Settling in New York, Rafinesque became a founding member of the newly established Lyceum of Natural History. In 1819, Rafinesque became professor of botany at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, where he also gave private lessons in French, Italian, and Spanish. Rafinesque started recording all the new species of plants and animals he encountered in travels throughout the state.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.