Eversmann was born in Westphalia on 23 January 1794 and studied at the universities of Marburg, Halle, Berlin and Dorpat.

He received his degree of Philosophy and Master of Liberal Sciences at Halle in 1814, and at Dorpat graduated as a Doctor of Medicine and Surgery in 1817.

During the next three years he travelled in the southern Urals, collecting specimens and sending them to Hinrich Lichtenstein at the university of Berlin.

In 1820 he set off for Bukhara disguised as a merchant, a journey he described in Reise Orenburg nach Buchara (1823), with a natural history appendix by Lichtenstein.

During the next thirty years he wrote numerous publications and is considered the pioneer of research into the flora and fauna of the southeast steppes of Russia between the Volga and the Urals.