Evert Julius Bonsdorff

His father Johan Bonsdorff was a professor of Greek at the University of Helsinki married to Erika Emerentia Wasz.

After private home tuitions from his father and from a few others like Johan Jakob Nervander he joined the university at the age of fifteen where he studied physics under Gustaf Gabriel Hällström and chemistry from a cousin Pehr Adolf von Bonsdorff.

These excursions included other students like August Leonard Ahlstedt and Johan Philip Palmen both of whom later became Bonsdorffs' brothers-in-law.

He then joined the university for medical studies where his teachers included N. A. Ursin, Immanuel Ilmoni (who had trained under Israel Hwasser), and Carl Daniel von Haartman.

Bonsdorff's thesis in 1836 was of a philosophical nature and was based on the physiology related work of Treviranus, Meckel and Carl Gustav Carus.

In the 1840s he established a zoological collection at the university, with the help of Magnus von Wright who prepared most of the specimens of Bonsdorff.

This included anatomical studies, particularly the nerves of the head, of the dog, hooded crow, common crane, and other animals.