His younger brother, Ludolph Christian Treviranus (1779–1864), was also a naturalist and botanist, and also a notable taxonomist and zoologist.

Treviranus was born in Bremen and studied medicine at the University of Göttingen, where he took his doctor's degree in 1796.

During the following year, he was appointed professor of medicine and mathematics at the Bremen lyceum.

[1] In 1816, he was elected a corresponding member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

He put forward this belief in the first volume of his Biologie; oder die Philosophie der lebenden Natur, published in 1802, the same year similar opinions were expressed by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.