Early Life and Education
Bunsen was born at Korbach, an old town in the little German principality of Waldeck.
His father was a farmer who was driven by poverty to become a soldier. Having studied at the Korbach Grammar school and Marburg University, Bunsen went in his nineteenth year to Göttingen, where he supported himself by teaching and later by acting as tutor to William Backhouse Astor, John Jacob's son. He won the university prize essay of the year 1812 by a treatise on the Athenian Law of Inheritance, and a few months later the University of Jena granted him the honorary degree of doctor of philosophy.
Read more about this topic: Christian Charles Josias Von Bunsen
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