He was first educated in music by his father, but being orphaned at age 12, he apprenticed to his godfather, the apothecary, Johannes Romke.

[3] For the next three years, he found work in London with a wealthy and renowned Dutch surgeon, Abraham Cyprianus, a Fellow of the Royal Society.

At this time he became acquainted with several members of the Royal Society, including Isaac Newton and Hans Sloane.

[1] While there, he returned to Berlin and made connections that ultimately resulted in his appointment as the Royal Court Apothecary, when he completed his European travels in 1719.

[5] In 2009, Alexander Kraft established that it was Caspar Neumann who conveyed the secret formula for preparing the first synthetic pigment, Prussian blue, to the Royal Society in England in 1723.