He became the most important scientist in the country during the second half of the 19th century and was a key figure in the creation of the Museum of Natural Science and the National Library of Venezuela, where he also served as its director.

At this German institution, he met two children of the Venezuelan general Judas Tadeo Piñango, with whom he struck up a warm friendship, who encouraged him to travel to Venezuela.

During the government of Antonio Guzmán Blanco, he participated in the international exhibitions organization in Vienna (1873), Bremen (1874), Santiago de Chile and Philadelphia (1876).

The ethnographic and archaeological collections acquired by the National Museum formed the basis for publishing a series of descriptive anthropological works of diverse indigenous groups in the country: Wayuu, Ayamanes, Warao.

One of Adolf Ernst's main merits was his disclosing Venezuelan material to the international scientific societies of the nineteenth century, and publishing their contributions in journals such as Globus, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, American Anthropologist and in the Bulletin de la Société du Anthropologie Paris.