Education
Leiden University.
Leiden University.
He was a younger brother to naturalist Christian Gottfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck (1776–1858). In 1805 Nees von Esenbeck was an apprentice to pharmacist Wilhelm Martius in Erlangen, and in 1811 moved to Basel, where he worked for the Bernoulli family at the Goldenen Apotheke. In 1818 he earned his doctorate at the university, and subsequently moved to Bonn, where he worked at the botanical gardens.
Nees von Esenbeck is largely remembered for pharmacological analysis and taxonomy of various medicinal plants.
The plant genus Neesia in the subfamily Bombacoideae was named after him by botanist Carl Ludwig Blume (1796–1862).
In 1827 he attained the title of "full professor" at the University of Bonn, where he was a colleague of Ludolph Christian Treviranus (1779–1864). In the mid-1830s, with Philipp Wilhelm Wirtgen (1806–1870) and Ludwig Clamor Marquart (1804–1881), he was co-founder of the Botanischer Verein am Mittelund Niederrhein (Botanical Society of the Middle and Lower Rhine).
