Brandt was educated at St. Petersburg where he studied at the
Saint Peter's School after which he studied medicine, receiving a diploma in 1862. He then studied zoology, training under his uncle Fedor Fedorovich Brandt (German form
Johann Friedrich von Brandt), particularly examining the insects and received a master's degree in 1876. In 1863 he became an assistant in comparative anatomy at the Imperial Military Medical Academy. He made field trips in Paris with
Émile Blanchard and
Henri Milne-Edwards in 1866 and met
Richard Owen in London. He became a professor of zoology in 1878 and was elected to the
Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 1881. His major work was on the nervous system of insects for which he received an award from the French Academy of Sciences. Between 1880 and 1889 he presided over the
Russian Entomological Society. == References ==