page_title: Albert Heinrich Riise
section_title: Pharmacist on St. Thomas
hierarchical_section_title: Albert Heinrich Riise / Pharmacist on St. Thomas
caption_attribution_description: English: AH Riise Certificate St. Thomas Apothecary Hall
context_page_description: Albert Heinrich Riise, often referred to as A. H. Riise, was a Danish pharmacist, merchant and manufacturer of rum on Saint Thomas in the Danish West Indies. A brand of rum is still named A.H. Riise after him. Late in his life he returned to Denmark where Sankt Thomas Plads in the Frederiksberg district of Copenhagen is named after his former country house. He was the father of photographer Frederik Riise.
context_section_description: A long-cherished desire to get to the West Indies was fulfilled in 1838 when he managed to get the privilege as a pharmacist in the Danish West Indies. Upon arrival in Saint Thomas, he at first worked in a so-called doctor stall, driven by several doctors. The following year he established his own pharmacy in partnership with a doctor. In 1843, he was able to buy out the partner, so he became the sole owner of the pharmacy. It went well for Riise, the business grew, he travelled to the United States and Trinidad among others.
  Equipped with a large stock of all kinds of goods, especially pharmaceutical products, St. Thomas Pharmacy became known throughout the surrounding Caribbean islands as the place where anything one might need for any household was to be obtained.
  Riise had a lively interest in botany and with utilized Caribbean exotic plants and animal life for the preparation of pharmaceutical, cosmetic and alcoholic products. He collected a great deal of herpetological and other zoological specimens, which were sent to Copenhagen and other European museums. The Danish zoologists Johannes Theodor Reinhardt and Christian Frederik Lütken were preparing a great monograph on the amphibians and reptiles of the Danish West Indies and the wider Caribbean, much of it based on the extensive collections of Riise, unfortunately for them however, the young American Edward Drinker Cope found a number of Riise's (he thought the man was called Rüse) specimens from the Danish West Indies of the species that they were in the process of describing which had been sent to America, and rushed to describe them for posterity himself, publishing his work in 1862 a week or two earlier than them, which necessitated a rash of last minute changes to their manuscript before it could be brought to the printers.
caption: AH Riise Certificate
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