Reichenow was born in
Berlin. He studied natural sciences in
Heidelberg,
Berlin and
Munich, and received his doctorate in 1908. After graduation he conducted research of
protozoans at the Imperial Health Ministry in Berlin. From 1913 onward, he served as a government
zoologist in
Kamerun, where he did studies on the biology of the
malaria pathogen. From 1916 to 1919 he conducted research at the
Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in
Madrid, and in 1921 was appointed director of the protozoology department at the
Schiffs- und Tropenkrankheiten in
Hamburg. During the same year, he received his habilitation from the
University of Hamburg and in 1925 obtained the title of professor. He was an editor of the journals:
Zeitschrift für Tropenmedizin, the
Zentralblatt für Bakteriologie and the
Zeitschrift für Parasitenkunde. The
Eduard-Reichenow-Medaille is an award offered by the
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Protozoologie. In 1932
Alfred Kahl named the protozoan genus
Reichenowella (family ) in his honor. His name is also associated with a species of
Plasmodium,
Plasmodium reichenowi, a malaria parasite of
chimpanzees and
gorillas, which Reichenow was the first to document. He died in
Wuppertal. In 1943 Reichenow and Lilly Mudrow helped solve a long-standing mystery in malaria infections; What is the parasite doing after mosquito bite and before blood-stage infection? Together the two researchers discovered parasite growth in endothelial cells in
canaries infected the parasite in the avian malaria species
Plasmodium praecox (now classified as
P. relictum). == Personal life ==