He became a lecturer on natural history at his alma mater, University of Utrecht.

[2] He was a friend of Albert Schlosser, whose cabinet of "curiosities" of natural history he described.

In 1783 he published 50 copies of an identification key of Edmé-Louis Daubenton's Planches enluminées, the colored plates of illustrations for the comte de Buffon's monumental Histoire Naturelle (published 1749–1789), assigning binomial scientific names to the plates.

In 2017 the world list of birds maintained by Frank Gill and David Donsker on behalf of the International Ornithologists' Union included 190 taxa for which Boddaert is cited as the authority.

[7] Boddaert is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of South American snake, Mastigodryas boddaerti.