Boheman was born in Jönköping, the son of mystic Carl Adolf Andersson Boheman who was involved in Freemasonry and made money in England and Copenhagen. Boheman was to become a merchant and apprenticed to Nils Westrin, a student of Linnaeus and Thunberg who collected insects. This made him interested in insects at an early age and he studied Latin. He studied law at
Lund University but quit in 1813 and joined the Jönköping Regiment and trained as an officer, participating in the invasion of Norway in 1814. He collected insect specimens through his travels. He was called by the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1841 to the position of professor and keeper of the Department of Entomology of the
Swedish Museum of Natural History in
Stockholm. He had been made a member of the Academy in 1838. He retired from the Museum in 1867. Boheman was a specialist in
coleoptera, and particularly in
Chrysomelidae and
Rhynchophora, he collaborated in particular with
Carl Johan Schönherr (1772–1848) in his great work on
Curculionidae. His other works included ''
(1847), Insecta Caffraria
(two volumes, 1848–1857), Monographia Cassididarum Holmiæ
(four volumes, 1850–1862) and the ninth part, devoted to Cassidinae, in Catalogue of coleopterous insects in the collection of the British Museum
(1856). Boheman who wrote 49 important papers described many common species some from San Francisco, California taken on the 1851–1853 expedition voyage of the Eugenie
'' (1858–1859), as well as very many other North American Coleoptera. His grandson was diplomat
Erik Boheman and his great-grandson was actor
Erland Josephson. ==Works==