About August Ahlqvist
Karl August Engelbrekt Ahlqvist, who wrote as A. Oksanen (7 August 1826 – 20 November 1889), was a Finnish professor, poet, scholar of the Finno-Ugric languages, author, and literary critic. He served as professor of Finnish language and literature at the Imperial Alexander University (now University of Helsinki) from 1863 as the successor to Elias Lönnrot, and as the university's rector from 1884 to 1887. Ahlqvist is regarded as one of the founders of Finno-Ugric studies alongside Matthias Alexander Castrén, and as a poet under the pen name A. Oksanen he introduced several new verse forms into Finnish-language poetry. He is also remembered as the sharpest critic of the writer Aleksis Kivi, who later rose to the position of the national author of Finland. Ahlqvist was also the first to translate the works of Johan Ludvig Runeberg (1804–1877) into Finnish. He founded the Finnish language magazine Suometar in 1847 which was published until 1866 and later also founded the Finnish linguistic journal Kieletär, which was published between 1871 and 1875.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.