In 1787 he was apprenticed to an Amsterdampharmacy where his brother worked. He came in contact with several scientists, including the botanist Gerardus Vrolik. He had his education at the Athenaeum Illustre where he successfully engaged in the study chemistry and botany. Under the Batavian Republic and the Kingdom of Holland he served as a professor of natural history at the University of Harderwijk from 1800 to 1808. After a while he became associate professor of chemistry and pharmacy. In 1808 he appealed to king Louis Bonaparte and was offered work as director of the "to be built" botanical and zoological gardens and museums. In 1808 he became a member of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands. And in 1810 just before the annexation of the Kingdom of Holland by the French Empire, he became professor of natural history in Amsterdam. After the restoration of independence in 1813 and of its colonial empire in 1816, the Netherlands was eager to re-establish contact with its colonies. In 1816 he was offered a position as head of agriculture, arts and science of the colony, and journeyed to the Dutch East Indies where he conducted various botanical investigations throughout the archipelago. Reinwardt was the founder and first director of the botanical gardens at Bogor in Java. There he gathered and cultivated various flora from the surrounding islands such as the Moluccas, Timor and Sulawesi. Reinwardt also undertook several expeditions to collect plants that were sent to the Hortus Botanicus Leiden. However, not many of these plants survived the journey from Java to the Netherlands. He remained as director of the Botanical Gardens until 1821 and spent most of his time gathering tropical plants. He returned to the Netherlands in 1822 and became a professor of natural history at the University of Leiden in 1823, where he devoted his life to chemistry, botany and mineralogy. Reinwardt also studied amphibians and reptiles, describing two new species of snakes, Laticauda semifasciata and Xenopeltis unicolor. In 1831 Reinwardt published a catalog of the plants growing in the Leiden Hortus. He counted exactly 5,600 species and varieties, an increase of nearly 600 since 1822. In particular, the numbers of Australian, Chinese and Japanese plants had increased. This increase in number of varieties was largely contributed by Philipp Franz von Siebold who sent many plants to the Hortus Botanicus in Leiden. Reinwardt finally retired as a professor in 1845 and died nine years later. He was succeeded by Willem Hendrik de Vriese.
On 16 May 2006 a monument for Reinwardt was erected in the Bogor Botanical Gardens by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences to celebrate its 189th anniversary. The monument was built at the initiative of the German Botanist, Herwig Zahorka.
Eponymous taxa
Some of the taxa that honor him are listed below:
Reinwardtia, genus of plant in the family Linaceae.
"Hepaticae Javanicae : editae conjunctis studiis et opera", 1824.
Über den Charakter der Vegetation auf den inseln des Indischen Archipels, 1828.
"Musci frondosi Iavanici", 1828.
"Enumeratio plantarum quae in horto Lugduno-Batavo coluntur", 1831.
"Plantae Indiae Batavae Orientalis : quas, in itinere per insulas archipelagi indici Javam, Amboinam, Celebem, Ternatam, aliasque, annis 1815-1821 exploravit Casp. Georg. Carol. Reinwardt".
"The correspondence of Caspar Georg Carl Reinwardt ".
