In 1787, he was apprenticed to an
Amsterdam pharmacy where his brother worked. He came in contact with several scientists, including the botanist Gerardus Vrolik (father of
Willem Vrolik). He had his education at the
Athenaeum Illustre where he successfully engaged in the study chemistry and botany. Under the
Batavian Republic and the
Kingdom of Holland he served as a professor of
natural history at the
University of Harderwijk from 1800 to 1808. After a while he became associate professor of
chemistry and
pharmacy. In 1808, he appealed to king
Louis Bonaparte and was offered work as director of the "to be built" botanical and zoological gardens and museums. In 1808, he became a member of the
Royal Institute of the Netherlands. And in 1810, just before the annexation of the Kingdom of Holland by the
French Empire, he became professor of natural history in Amsterdam. After the restoration of independence in 1813 and of its colonial empire in 1816, the Netherlands was eager to re-establish contact with its colonies. In 1816 he was offered a position as head of agriculture, arts and science of the colony, and journeyed to the
Dutch East Indies where he conducted various botanical investigations throughout the archipelago. Reinwardt was the founder (1817) and first director of the
botanical gardens at
Bogor (then called Buitenzorg) in
Java. There he gathered and cultivated various flora from the surrounding islands such as the
Moluccas,
Timor and
Sulawesi. Reinwardt also undertook several expeditions to collect plants that were sent to the
Hortus Botanicus Leiden. However, not many of these plants survived the journey from Java to the Netherlands. The ship on which they were transported, the Zr. Ms,
Admiraal Evertsen under command of Captain-Lieutenant
Ver Huell, was shipwrecked on
Diego Garcia with the loss of its precious cargo. He remained as director of the Botanical Gardens until 1821 and spent most of his time gathering tropical plants. He returned to the Netherlands in 1822 and became a professor of natural history at the
University of Leiden in 1823, where he devoted his life to chemistry, botany and
mineralogy. Reinwardt also studied
amphibians and
reptiles, describing two new species of snakes,
Laticauda semifasciata and
Xenopeltis unicolor. In 1831, Reinwardt published a catalog of the plants growing in the Leiden Hortus. He counted exactly 5,600 species and varieties, an increase of nearly 600 since 1822. In particular, the numbers of Australian, Chinese and Japanese plants had increased. This increase in number of varieties was largely contributed by
Philipp Franz von Siebold who sent many plants to the Hortus Botanicus in Leiden. Reinwardt finally retired as a professor in 1845 and died nine years later. He was succeeded by
Willem Hendrik de Vriese.
Legacy The botanical journal
Reinwardtia (ISSN 0034-365X) from
Bogor Botanical Gardens,
Indonesia, is named in his honour. The
Reinwardt Academy, the faculty of
museology and
cultural heritage of the
Amsterdam University of the Arts, is also named after Reinwardt. Reinwardt is honored in some
scientific names. The
genus Reinwardtia was named after him by
Barthélemy Charles Joseph Dumortier, and the
species Nepenthes reinwardtiana was named after him by
Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel. A journal of plant
taxonomy Reinwardtia published by the
Herbarium Bogoriense in
Java,
Indonesia is named after him.
Monument On 16 May 2006, a monument for Reinwardt was erected in the Bogor Botanical Gardens by the
Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) to celebrate its 189th anniversary. The monument was built at the initiative of the German botanist,
Herwig Zahorka. == Eponymous taxa ==