[3][4] Corporaal's early education was at the Technische Hogeschool in Delft; he then moved to Wageningen for studies at the National Agricultural School, hoping to go on to work in Indonesia (then the Dutch East Indies).
[2] In 1903 Corporaal traveled to Indonesia, where he worked first at Java and then at Sumatra[2] as an assistant tobacco planter[3] at plantations belonging to the company Senembah Maatschappij.
[3] Corporaal's work involved using his agricultural and entomological training to try to combat crop pests, and he studied beetles in his spare time.
[2] In April–June 1915 Corporaal collected several weevils from the family Anthribidae which he sent for identification to Karl Jordan at the Tring Museum in Hertfordshire, U.K.[5] Corporaal suffered from a period of ill-health circa 1915 which caused him to return to the Netherlands where he met his future wife, Annie van Rienderhoff.
[2] In 1928 Corporaal attended the fourth International Congress of Entomology in Ithaca, New York as a representative of the Amsterdam Zoological Museum and the Netherlands.