Evert Julius Bonsdorff (24 September 1810 – 30 July 1898) was a professor of anatomy and physiology who worked on comparative anatomy. He also described many species of insects from Finland.
Life and work
Bonsdorff was born in 1810 in a family of German origin. His father was a professor of Greek at the University of Helsinki. An grand uncle had been a professor of Lutheran theology. After private home tuitions he joined the university at the age of fifteen where he studied physics under Gustaf Gabriel Hällström and chemistry from a cousin Per Adolf von Bonsdorff. He studied natural history under C. R. Sahlberg. He received a magister philosophiae in 1832. He took a keen interest in entomology, collecting specimens and examined the behavior of insects during the solar eclipse of 1851. He wrote a two volume work on the Diptera of Finland based on his collections. He then joined the university for medical studies where his teachers included N. A. Ursin, Immanuel Ilmoni, and Carl Daniel von Haartman. Bonsdorff's theses in 1836 and in 1837 was of a philosophical nature and was based on the physiology related work of Treviranus, Meckel and Carl Gustav Carus. He went to study in Stockholm under Anders Retzius around 1838–39. Retzius and Bosdorff remained regular correspondents. became a permanent professor in 1846. He took an interest in comparative anatomy which was inspired by the traditions of Cuvier. This included anatomical studies of the dog, the hooded crow and other animals. He however did not take much interest in Darwinian thinking which began with his nephew Johan Axel Palmen. Bonsdorff began to take an interest in agriculture from the 1850s. He retired in 1871.[1]
