SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 23 September 2024, Shift 2 · General Awareness · Question 11 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 10 September 2026.

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SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Who published Systema Naturae in 1735 classifying the three kingdoms of nature and outlining the sexual system for the classification of plants?

(a)Carolus Linnaeus
(b)Robert Whittaker
(c)Ernst Haeckel
(d)Carl Woese

Answer

Why

Correct — A. Carolus Linnaeus, the Swedish naturalist, published Systema Naturae in 1735, sorting nature into three kingdoms — animal, vegetable and mineral.

His plant classification grouped species by the number and arrangement of stamens and pistils, which is the 'sexual system' the stem names. Linnaeus is also the author of binomial nomenclature, the two-word genus and species name still in use.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
Robert Whittaker — Robert Whittaker proposed the five-kingdom classification in 1969 — Monera, Protista, Fungi, Plantae and Animalia — built on cell structure and mode of nutrition. Two centuries after 1735.
(c)
Ernst Haeckel — Ernst Haeckel added Protista as a third kingdom in 1866, to hold organisms that fitted neither plants nor animals. A nineteenth-century revision of the scheme, not the original.
(d)
Carl Woese — Carl Woese used ribosomal RNA to split life into three domains — Bacteria, Archaea and Eukarya — and identified archaea as a separate line. That work belongs to the late twentieth century.

Concept

Classification is asked as a sequence of schemes, and knowing the sequence answers most such questions.

Linnaeus, 1735 — two living kingdoms, plants and animals, with minerals as a third. Haeckel, 1866 — Protista added for the single-celled forms.

Copeland later gave the bacteria a kingdom of their own, and Whittaker, 1969 settled the five kingdoms by separating the fungi.

Woese, from 1977, moved above the kingdom altogether and defined three domains on ribosomal RNA evidence.

The stem hands you the year and the title, so this is a name-to-work match rather than a test of taxonomy. The other three names are the later revisers, each attached to a scheme of their own.

Key facts

Linnaeus published Systema Naturae in 1735.
Binomial nomenclature, the genus and species naming system, is Linnaeus's.
Whittaker's five-kingdom classification dates from 1969.
Woese's three domains are Bacteria, Archaea and Eukarya.

Study next

Five-kingdom classification and the basis on which each kingdom is separatedRules of binomial nomenclature and how a scientific name is writtenTaxonomic hierarchy from kingdom down to species

Common traps

Matching Whittaker to any question carrying the word kingdom
Assuming the earliest scheme must be the one with the most kingdoms

Classification returns as kingdom-level recall. 12 Sep 2024, 09:00, General Awareness Q.1 asks which kingdom holds organisms without a defined nucleus, and 19 Sep 2024, 09:00, General Awareness Q.6 asks for an example of Phylum Arthropoda.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.