Background
Kuhl was born in Hanau (Hesse, Germany).
Botanist naturalist ornithologist writer Zoologist
Kuhl was born in Hanau (Hesse, Germany).
Between 1817 and 1820 he was the assistant of professor Th. van Swinderen, docent Natural History at the University of Groningen in Groningen (Netherlands). In 1817 he published a monograph on bats, and in 1819 he published a survey of the parrots, Conspectus psittacorum. In 1820 he became assistant to Coenraad Jacob Temminck at the Leiden Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie.
He described many new species and new genera of amphibians and reptiles.
In 1821 he died in Buitenzorg (now Bogor) of a liver infection brought on by the climate and overexertion. He had been less than a year in Java.
Johan van Hasselt continued his work collecting specimens, but died two years later. Several species have been named to commemorate his work as naturalist and zoologist:
Fishes
Bluespotted stingray or Kuhl"s stingray, Neotrygon kuhlii
Kuhl"s loach or kuhli loach, Pangio kuhlii
Kuhlia, a genus of marine fish, flagtail
Herpetofauna
Kuhl"s Creek Frog or Large-headed Frog, Limnonectes kuhlii, found in Southeast Asia
Kuhl"s forest dragon, Gonocephalus kuhli, a lizard found in Indonesia
Kuhl"s Flying Gecko, Ptychozoon kuhli, a gecko found in Southeast Asia
Birds
Rimatara Lorikeet or Kuhl"s Lorikeet, Vini kuhlii lorikeet in islands of the South Pacific
Mammals
Axis kuhlii, Bawean deer
Callithrix kuhlii
Eptesicus kuhli, synonym of Eptesicus nilssonii
Pipistrellus kuhlii, Kuhl"s Pipistrelle
Sciurillus pusillus kuhlii
Scotophilus kuhlii.
German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.