From 1809 to 1811, Karl Julius Perleb studied at the University of Freiburg and earned a doctorate in philosophy and in 1815 a degree in medicine.
He left his library and herbarium to the university, together with money for its administration and for travel grants for young scholars of the natural sciences.
[1][2] Perleb was an author of numerous scientific publications and was a friend of Freiburg historian Heinrich Schreiber.
In 1818 he translated de Candolle's Essai sur les propriétés médicales des plantes comparées avec leur classification naturelle into German as Versuch über die Arzneikräfte der Pflanzen, verglichen mit den äußeren Formen und der natürlichen Classeneintheilung derselben, with additions and comments.
He then developed a key to the diagnostic ranks, updated from the Lehrbuch, his Clavis classium, ordinum et familiarum atque index generum regni vegetabilis (1838), following the method of Ray.