German botanist Karl Friedrich Reiche, or Carlos as he was known, was head of botany at the National Museum of Natural History in Santiago, Chile, and worked to organise the wealth of specimens deposited at the museum at this time. Born in Dresden, Saxony, Reiche grew up with an interest in natural history and studied the natural sciences, gaining a PhD from the University of Leipzig in 1885. The following year he became a professor in Dresden where he remained until the Chilean government contracted him to teach mathematics, the physical and natural sciences and illustration at the recently founded school in Constitución, in the region of Maule (Chile). He began this post in 1889 and from the moment he set foot on Chilean soil was drawn to the study of its local flora, to which he would dedicate the next twenty years of his life. Reiche undertook numerous excursions throughout the country, not only collecting specimens but also conducting investigations for publication. In 1896 he was named head of botany at the National Museum of Natural History and moved to Santiago to work at their herbarium (SGO) under Rodolpho Philippi. Reiche set to work studying the ample collections contained there, including those of R. Philippi and his son Federico, creating taxonomic revisions for his most important work: the Estudios críticos sobre la Flora de Chile. He managed to publish 6 volumes of this work with the help of F. Philippi and F. Johow, but it was never completed. His other major work was the Grundzüge der Pflanzenverbreiting in Chile, a geo-botanic study of the country which was later translated into Spanish by Gualterio Looser. Reiche also published numerous other works on the native flora. In 1911 he was chosen to be the next director of the museum, a role which he refused due to his dissatisfaction with the Chilean authorities, and instead he accepted a post offered to him by the Mexican government. This was unfortunate because Reiche's knowledge of the museum and its collections was unparalleled at the time, but the professor of natural sciences Federico Fuentes took over from him as head of botany. For many years Reiche was professor of botany at the Mexican School of Higher Studies before returning to Germany in 1924 where he worked in Munich as a researcher at the Staatssammlung museum. Aside from a brief return to Mexico in 1926 to complete his teaching and research, he remained in Munich and was named curator of the phanerogamic collections in the same museum (M) in 1928, the year before his death. Reiche is commemorated in the epithet of the Hectorellaceae genus Reicheella Pax.

Sources:
Anon. "Historia del Herbario SGO del Museo Nacional de Historia Natural". Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos. http://www.dibam.cl/MNHN/Herbario/historia_set.html, Accessed March 2009:
H. Gunckel, 1961 "Sesquicentenario de la independencia nacional. Centenario del nacimiento del sabio botánico Dr. Carlos Reiche", Revista Universitaria. Anales de la Academia Chilena de Ciencias Naturales, 24: 67-71
Karl Friedrich Reiche. Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Friedrich_Reiche, accessed march 2009.