August Michael von Bulmerincq was a Baltic German scholar of international law, considered one of the most important German-speaking legal scholars of his generation. He was born in Riga, in what was at the time the Governorate of Livonia of the Russian Empire. His family was wealthy and influential. From 1841, he studied law at the University of Tartu, and eventually settled in Tartu and pursued a long academic career. Upon his retirement in 1874, he moved to Wiesbaden in present-day Germany and was given the char of international law at Heidelberg University, which he maintained until his death. He was one of the founding members of the Institut de Droit International.