Rodolfo Amando Philippi

In 1818, Philippi, his younger brother Bernhard Eunom (1811–1852) and their mother went to Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland, where they were educated at the Pestalozzian Institute founded by Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827).

Respiratory illness forced him to leave Berlin in 1830 to warmer parts of Italy where he travelled around with the geologists Friedrich Hoffmann and Arnold Escher von der Lind who were studying Etna and Vesuvius.

At Kassel, he interacted with the local malacologists who included Karl Menke, who had begun the first journal in German, Zeitschrift für Malakozoologie in 1844.

This led to an increased productivity, and he wrote several books including Abbildungen (illustrated monographs), leading to a medal from the new King, Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm IV.

His brother Bernhard Eunom Philippi in the meantime became a successful merchant and sailed to Chile several times, making collections for museums.

Bernhard moved to Chile in 1841 and encouraged Germans to emigrate to Punta Arenas, an area that he helped seize control of, and had been made a governor of the Magellan Province.

He left the rest of his family behind and received letters of introduction from Alexander von Humboldt to aid his travels in Chile.

Philippi directed a high school in Valdivia from 1853 and he was also appointed professor of zoology and botany at the Universidad de Chile (Santiago), as well as director of the natural history museum there.

He worked on several books on natural history in Chile and collaborated with travelling European naturalists like Christian Ludwig Landbeck as well as with museums in Europe.

[6] In 1897, botanist Carlos Luigi Spegazzini published Philippiella, a monotypic genus of flowering plants from Argentina and Chile, belonging to the family Thymelaeaceae named after him.