Brandes was born in
Salzuflen, the son of pharmacist Johann Gottlieb (1751–1816) and Friederike née Nolte. His father held license for their pharmacy in Salzuflen from 1792 and the pharmacy still exists. After studies at Osnabrück and Erfurt and he went to the
University of Halle where he received a doctorate in 1817 for a dissertation titled
Dissertatio de Strontiane mineralogico-chemica guided by Dr
Dobereiner from Jena. His father died on October 16, 1816, and the son returned to take over his father's pharmacy. Brandes worked initially with
Bucholz and after his death in 1818, he continued to work on plant compounds. He used his analytical chemistry skills to purify and characterize a number of chemical compounds including
delphinine (1819),
atropine (1822),
hyoscyamine, and
acrolein (1838). He travelled to visit pharmacists associations in France and on one visit met Alexander von Humboldt and they corresponded with Goethe (and met him in Weimaer in 1828) on meteorology and drew weather maps. Brandes took an interest in the composition of mineral springs in Europe. In 1820 he founded the group Apothekerverein im nördlichen Teutschland along with August Peter Julius Du Mênil, Ernst Witting, and Friedrich Wilhelm Beissenhirtz, which started publishing the
Archiv der Pharmazie, a publication that continues to be published today. The journal was merged with the
Liebigs Annalen in 1832, though due to disagreements with
Justus von Liebig it started being published independently in 1935; the journal would undergo several changes in name in the following 200 years of its existence. He also established a pharmacists' association in northern Germany that he oversaw until his death. The plant genus
Brandesia was named in his honour but is now a synonym of
Alternanthera. == References ==