Van Steenis attended high school in Utrecht from 1915 to 1920. He obtained his masters and PhD at the
University of Utrecht in 1925 and 1927, respectively. From 1927 to 1946, Van Steenis was botanist at the
herbarium of
's Lands Plantentuin at Buitenzorg (now
Bogor). From 1935 to 1942, he was co-editor of
De Tropische Natuur, the magazine of the Dutch East Indian Natural History Society. From 1946 to 1949 he was active in the Netherlands. In 1948 and 1950, he took up
Heinrich Zollinger's 1857 recognition of
Malesia as a
floristic region in the
Paleotropical kingdom, and expanded it. Van Steenis suggested and then organized
Flora Malesiana, a description of the flora of Malesia. From 1950 until his death in 1986, he was director of the Flora Malesiana Foundation. In 1951, he was appointed professor of tropical
botany and
plant geography on behalf of the
Royal Tropical Institute in
Amsterdam. From 1953 he was a professor in these subjects at the
University of Leiden. From 1962 to 1972 he was professor and director of the
National Herbarium of the Netherlands as a successor of
Herman Johannes Lam. Van Steenis was succeeded in this position by
Kees Kalkman. On 5 June 1950 he was elected a corresponding member of the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, but cancelled his membership on 1 December of that year. He was also a corresponding member of the
Botanical Society of America. Elected a Foreign Member of the
Linnean Society in 1960. The Van Steenis Building of the University of Leiden, the
Rubiaceae genus
Steenisia, and the street
Cornelis van Steenishof in
Oegstgeest are named after him. == References ==