Willem Hendrik de Vriese

Who was Willem Hendrik de Vriese?

Willem Hendrik de Vriese was a Dutch botanist and physician born in Oosterhout, North Brabant.

He studied medicine at the University of Leiden, earning his doctorate in 1831. Afterwards he practiced medicine in Rotterdam, where he also gave classes in botany at the medical school. In 1834, he was appointed associate professor of botany at the Athenaeum Illustré in Amsterdam, and in 1841 was promoted to full professor. In 1845, he became a professor of botany at Leiden and successor to Caspar Georg Carl Reinwardt at the Hortus Botanicus Leiden. He became a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences in 1838.

In October 1857, he was commissioned to conduct botanical investigations in the Dutch East Indies, and consequently spent the following years performing research in Java, Borneo, Sumatra and the Moluccas. In March 1861, he returned to the Netherlands in a weakened state, and died in Leiden several months later.

Among his written works was the first part of Hortus Spaarne-Bergensis, a catalogue of banker Adriaan van der Hoop's exotic plant collection. He also completed works which were initiated by Reinwardt and German botanist Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn, and was the author of noteworthy treatises on cinchona, vanilla and camphor. In addition he published monographs on the genus Rafflesia and the botanical family Marattiaceae.