Pehr Kalm (1716-1779) was the most renowned Finnish naturalist of his time, and he has been rightly called "the father of ecology in Finland". He studied at Turku in the university "Academia Aboensis" (now the University of Helsinki) and then at Uppsala under the famous Carl Linnaeus. In 1747 he was appointed the first professor of economics of the "Aboensis", but before entering the office he made an important research trip to North America, exhorted by Linnaeus and supported by the newly-founded Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. During the voyage he was in close contact with Benjamin Franklin, who published Kalm's description of the Niagara Falls in his magazine. After returning to Turku he tried systematically, although mainly unsuccesfully, to cultivate the plants he had brought from America, and published his travel account "En Resa til Norra America" in three volumes in 1753-1761. Three more volumes were planned and partly written, but the manuscripts and parts of Kalm's journal perished in the great fire of Turku in 1827. As professor, Kalm published with his students about 150 dissertations on agriculture, gardening, forestry, and other useful subjects. The travel book was translated into different European languages - German, Dutch, English - already during Kalm's lifetime, later also as abridged versions into French and Finnish. Kalm's work and legacy have been actively studied in the 1900s, and recently Dr. Rosemarie Tsubaki has been able to reconstruct those parts of his voyage which are lacking in his diary and travel book.