Johannes Theodor Reinhardt

Johannes Theodor Reinhardt (3 December 1816, Copenhagen - 23 October 1882) was a Danish zoologist and herpetologist. He was the son of Johannes Christopher Hagemann Reinhardt.

In 1847 he became the curator of land vertebrates at the Königlichen Naturhistorischen Museum in Kopenhagen (now University of Copenhagen Zoological Museum). He taught classes in zoology at the Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (1856-1878) and at the University of Copenhagen (1861-1878). In 1854 he received the title of professor.

During the 1840s and 1850s he periodically worked in Brazil as an assistant to palaeontologist Peter Wilhelm Lund (1801-1880). He was an early supporter of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, and from his research of extinct species, was critical of George Cuvier's concept of "anti-evolutionary catastrophism".^[1]

In 1848 Hermann Schlegel named the Calabar "python", Charina reinhardtii, in his honor.