Dr. Christian Frederik Louis Leipoldt, usually referred to as C. Louis Leipoldt, was born in Worcester (RSA) on 28 December 1880. He was the son of a preacher and grandson of the Rhenish missionary, Johann Gottlieb Leipoldt, who founded Wupperthal in the Cederberg mountains. Leipoldt, who was mostly educated at home, was a reporter in the Second Boer War..
Although his own health at times was poor he studied medicine at Guy’s Hospital in London and travelled Europe, America and the East Indies. For a period of some six months during 1908, he was the personal physician of the American newspaper magnate, Joseph Pulitzer, aboard Pulitzer's yacht.
He was a school doctor in London before becoming the Medical Inspector of Schools in the old Transvaal Province (today’s Gauteng, Northern and Limpopo Provinces) and then later in the Cape Province (today’s Western Cape Province). He returned to journalism for a while (1923), but finally settled down as a paediatrician in Cape Town in 1925. He never married.
He died in Cape Town on 12 April 1947 but, because of his deep love for the Hantam — a mountainous district north of Cape Town — his ashes were laid to rest in the rugged Pakhuis Pass near Clanwilliam.
Most of his work does not translate well into English.