Prussian-born Dutch botanist who founded the Buitenzorg (Bogor) Botanic Gardens in Java. Caspar Reinwardt was born at Lüttringshausen near Remscheid in the Rhine region of Germany. After studies in Holland, he was appointed Professor of Natural History at the University of Harderwijk in 1800, where he began to devote himself to the study of botany, while maintaining a strong interest in other sciences such as geology and chemistry. After a brief departure from academia in 1808-1810, during which time he managed the menagerie of Louis Napoleon, he was appointed Professor of Chemistry, Pharmacy and Natural History at Amsterdam.
Reinwardt's travels began in 1815 when he was selected by the Dutch government to join commissioners sailing to the Dutch East Indies, which had been ceded to Holland by the English. Reinwardt was to organise various aspects of infrastructure and scientific investigation. In 1817 he founded the Botanic Gardens of Buitenzorg (Bogor), of which he was the first director. The gardens and herbarium grew over the next century to become a renowned hub of botanical research in the Malesian region, with one of the foremost collections of plants in Asia.
The basis of the herbarium was formed by Reinwardt, who explored many parts of Indonesia during his time in office at Buitenzorg. His first year there saw him mostly based in Batavia and Buitenzorg, making only a few short trips elsewhere, but in 1817 he visited the volcano range of Mount Salak and explored West Java in July, not returning to his base at Buitenzorg until November, having gathered a large collection of plant specimens. He collected more in West Java in 1819, touring the Priangan Regencies and the slopes of Mount Gedeh and other mountains. He probably visited Saleier, Sulawesi Selatan, in 1820 and spent 1821 exploring other islands, for example Timor in April and the Banda archipelago from May-June. In October that year he was the first European to ascend the volcano Mount Soputan on Sulawesi. From late 1821 to early 1822 he explored East Java, then after falling ill in February he returned to Buitenzorg via the north coast. Reinwardt's publications, Enumaratio plantarum Javae (1827-1830) and Über den Charakter der Vegetation auf den Inseln des Indischen Archipels (1828), were based on the collections and observations he had made while in the Indies.
Reinwardt returned to Europe in 1822, where he would see out the rest of his days in the chair of Natural History and Chemistry at the University of Leiden, another centre of botanical excellence. In his later life he suffered from chronic bronchitis, which wore him down over many years. After his death in 1854, Willem de Vriese edited his remaining unpublished works. The genus Reinwardtia commemorates him, as do a number of plant and animal species names and the pigeon genus Reinwardtoena. The botanical journal of Bogor Botanical Gardens, Reinwardtia, and the Reinwardt Academy, the faculty of museology and cultural heritage of the Amsterdam School for the Arts, are also named in his honour.
Sources:
Anon., 1854, Flora, 37: 175-176
J.G., 1855, Hooker's Journal of Botany and Kew Miscellany, 7: 21-23
A. Weber, 2009, "Encountering the Netherlands Indies: Caspar G.C. Reinwardt's Field Trip to the East (1816-1822)", Itinerario, 33: 45-60.
