In 1956, Sonja Lyttkens became the second woman in Sweden to receive a doctorate in mathematics for a thesis on harmonic analysis.
In 1963, she became the country's first university lecturer in mathematics, a position she held until 1984. Lyttkens was also committed to improving the conditions for women in academia.
In addition to her work, Lyttkens devoted herself to watercolor painting and had already had several exhibitions before her retirement. Her watercolors are represented at the National Arts Council.
As late as 1986, Lyttkens published a work: General Tauberian Theorems Connected with a Theorem of Korenblum. After retirement, Lyttkens devoted himself entirely to his watercolor painting.
Axel W. Persson was born in Kvidinge and was interested in archaeology from an early age.
Persson's studies and interest in the Greek language led him to become an associate professor of Greek language and literature in 1915, and of classics and ancient history in 1921. In Uppsala, Persson became professor of classics and ancient history in 1924.
Persson was the leader of successful excavations in Greece (Asine 1922-1930, Dendra and Midea 1926-1927, 1937 and 1939 and in Berbati 1936-1937) and Turkey (Milas 1938 and Labraynda 1948-1950).
Of particular note was the uncovered dome tomb at Dendra , with treasures from Mycenaean times, excavated in 1926. The discovery was described as the largest archaeological find after Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt. The tomb contained a king, a queen and a princess. In addition, precious grave goods such as gold swords and precious metal bowls were found. The finds from the dome tomb ended up in the National Museum of Athens. Persson's findings were published in scientific monographs such as The Royaltombs at Dendra near Midea (1931). This work is considered a classic.
Together with his wife, he made an important humanitarian contribution to Greece during the Second World War in the service of the Red Cross.
After the end of the Second World War, Persson carried out new excavations. In Labraynda, the aim was to find the origins of the Minoan culture. However, a temple site of classical and Roman times was found. Soon after, Persson died of a stroke.
Between 1924 and 1951, Axel W. Persson was professor of classical archaeology and, through his discoveries, his writing and his lectures, made classical archaeology known and appreciated in Sweden. Persson was awarded the Övralid Prize.
At the time of his death, Persson was considered one of the world's leading archaeologists. He is also the father of Viktor Persson, better known as Bok-Viktor.
Jane Miller Thengberg was born in Greenock, Scotland, and after the death of her father, her mother moved back to Sweden with her two children.
Miller Thengberg studied education in Sweden and abroad and taught as a governess in Stockholm from 1845 to 1852. She was also a governess in Scotland for a short time.
In 1853 she moved to Uppsala, where she soon met her future husband, the librarian and teacher at the cathedral school Pehr Adrian Thengberg.
Miller Thengberg was strongly committed to the issue of girls' education. With the support of her husband Adrian Thengberg, P. D. Atterbom, Malla Silfverstolpe and Gunnar Wennerberg, she founded a girls' school in 1855 called Klosterskolan.
Teaching took place in the building on what is now Klostergatan. The school quickly gained a reputation as the best girls' school in the country. The building has its roots in the medieval settlement and is located in the block north of the old monastery area.
When Miller Thengberg was recruited eight years later as director of the Higher Teacher Training College, with a training school in Stockholm, 130 girls had been educated in the building.
She was also one of the initiators of the School of Home Economics in Uppsala.
Jane Miller Thengberg is buried at the Västgöta nations Burial site , which was donated by her husband Adrian Thengberg (died 1859) and Jane Miller Thengberg. She paid for both the long iron fence and the casting of the sculpted lion by sculptor W. Hoffman.
Image description: Jane Miller Thengberg, Stockholm 1870. Photo: W. A. Eurenius & P. L. Quist / UUB.The image is cropped] Click here for an uncropped image
After graduating from high school, Eva Andén began studying law at Uppsala University and graduated in 1912.
After graduating from law school, she traveled around the country lecturing on marriage, child welfare and poor relief laws. Andén also led courses in legal knowledge for rural women, organized by the National Association for Women's Political Suffrage (LKPR).
In 1915, Andén took over a law firm for female clients, Kvinnliga juristbyrån, and three years later she became the first woman to become a member of the Swedish Bar Association.
Andén specialized in family law and mainly assisted clients in connection with divorces, inheritance, alimony, custody issues and division of property in divorces. His clients included Selma Lagerlöf and Astrid Lindgren.
Eva Andén was also a member of a committee that served as the Swedish Bar Association's referral body for family law legislation, where she occasionally had great influence.
From 1950 to 1962 she was also President of the Society of Nine. Andén practiced law until her death in 1970.
Image description: Eva Andén, year unknown. Photo: Atelier Hedström, Uppsala / KvinnSam, Gothenburg University Library. [The image is cropped] Click here for an uncropped image
Alfred Dahlgren learned photography in Germany and from photographer Dahllöf in Stockholm. In 1890 he established his own studio at Dragarbrunnsgatan 48 in Uppsala where he worked as a portrait photographer.
In 1901, the Uppsala City Council decided that the city should be photographed, and Dahlgren was commissioned to take the 350 pictures to be delivered in two bound albums.
On weekdays he worked in his studio and early Sunday mornings, when the city was empty, he went out to take his pictures. After a year, the photographs were handed over in albums to the city council.
Nybron in Uppsala, decorated in connection with the Linnaeus Jubilee in 1907. Photo: Alfred Dahlgren / UUB.
Tobogganing through King John's Gate at Uppsala Castle, ca 1890. Photo: Alfred Dahlgren / UUB.
In 1908 he was commissioned to supplement the documentation with pictures of the city's outskirts and farm interiors from old city farms. In the same year, however, Alfred Dahlgren died and his last pictures were therefore handed over by his widow.
A total of 540 glass negatives are in the possession of the Uppland Museum and the two albums with the photographs are in Uppsala City Library. The photographs are a remarkable cultural and historical treasure.
Emma Schenson was probably the first female professional photographer in Uppsala and also one of the first women in Sweden to take photographs professionally.
She first trained as a watercolor painter, but from the 1860s she worked in parallel with both painting and photography. In the early days of photography, it was unusual for women to take photographs professionally, but after the 1864 Freedom of Trade Act, it became possible for women to enter the market and establish themselves as entrepreneurs and photographers.
Schenson was active in Uppsala from the 1860s onwards and had a permanent studio at Östra Ågatan 25 (between Nybron and Dombron). In 1888, the Fotografiska föreningen, which organized photographers, had three female members out of a total of 65. These women were Anna Hwass, Wilhelmina Skogh and Emma Schenson.
During Schenson's active period, the business card photograph and the larger cabinet photograph (format approx. 12×16.5 cm) became very popular in all social classes. It is very likely that there are pictures of older Uppsala families made by her.
The Domen quarter, Fyristorg and Uppsala Cathedral, Fjärdingen, Uppsala before 1885. Photographer: probably Emma Schensson, Uppsala / Upplandsmuseet.
"Svartbäcksgubbar" in Kvarnfallet at Akademikvarnen, Holmen district, Uppsala 1880s - 1890s. Photographer: Emma Schenson / Upplandsmuseet.
Between 1885 and 1893, Emma Schenson documented the major restoration of Uppsala Cathedral. Through her pictures we can follow the restoration from start to finish.
No negatives of Schenson's photographs are preserved today, but some photos have been preserved and are now in the Map and Image Collections at Uppsala University Library.
There is also an album showing the transformation of the cathedral during the time of the great restoration. The value of this photographic documentation was recognized early on, as can be seen in an inscription in Schenson's album, which concludes "unique of its kind and important for the future". The photographs that have been preserved are a remarkable cultural and historical treasure.
For the first four years, Hans Rosling lived in the Luthagen district, after which the family moved to Svartbäcken in Uppsala. After graduating from high school, Rosling studied statistics and medicine at Uppsala University. During a trip to Asia in 1972, his interest in public health led to a course in social medicine at St. John's Medical College in Bangalore, India.
After graduating in 1975 and working as an intern in Hudiksvall, he furthered his education and gained expertise in tropical medicine at Uppsala University in 1977.
From 1979 to 1981, the Roslings worked in Nacala Porto in northern Mozambique, where Hans was a district doctor and his wife Agneta a midwife. In 1981, an epidemic of a previously unknown spastic paralysis disease broke out in the Nacala district, affecting more than 1,500 people, mostly women and children. The paralysis was linked to a very aggressive and highly monotonous diet consisting of a toxic form of cassava.
Rosling described the disease in his doctoral thesis and named it Konzo. This means 'bound bones' in the Congolese language where the disease was once described in 1938. During the 1980s, there were several Konzo outbreaks in other African countries.
From 1983 to 1996, Rosling worked as a teacher and researcher at Uppsala University in collaboration with several universities in Africa and Asia. In 1997 he was appointed Professor of International Health at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
In 1999, Rosling began lecturing with a new kind of animated bubble chart that showed the socio-economic state of the world and trends over time. The program was called Trendalyzer and had been developed by his son and son's wife, with whom he co-founded the Gapminder Foundation.
The lectures made complex statistics on world developments understandable to the public, policy makers and opinion leaders. The lectures were broadcast via the Web and TV all over the world, and governments and organizations hired him as a lecturer and advisor.
Rosling devoted his professional life to global health, global health problems, and how these are related to poverty. With the conviction that reason and knowledge improve the world and that with it we can eradicate extreme poverty and reduce carbon emissions, Rosling pointed out that it is the richest billion of the world's population that must first and foremost reduce carbon emissions because they account for half of them.
Hans Rosling's memoirs How I Learnedto Understand the World, written with journalist Fanny Härgestam, were published posthumously in 2017 and Factfulness, written in collaboration with Ola and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, was published in 2018.
Yngve Svalander studied at Slöjdföreningens skola, Konstakademien and also abroad. He worked mainly as a draughtsman and graphic artist and was a cartoonist for Upsala Nya Tidning since the 1950s.
He created 'Kajan', which in 1962 began delivering a daily commentary on the newspaper's feature page. The inspiration came from the crows circling the cathedral spires. This crow became the newspaper's signature and was published for more than 24 years, six days a week.
Svalander has also illustrated several books, such as Tore Vretman's Menu (1956) and published the storybook Ballongresan.
Yngve Svalander is represented in H.M. King Gustav VI Adolf's collection, Uppsala University Library and Borås Museum.
Viktor Persson, nicknamed "Bok-Viktor", was a well-known antiquarian bookseller and a well-known Uppsala profile. Viktor Persson lived on Övre Slottsgatan in Uppsala and in his small apartment he shared the space with his aquariums and many books.
In the 1950s, with the support of his father, archaeologist Axel W Persson, he established an antiquarian bookshop at Drottninggatan 3 near Politiska knuten called Bokfenix, which became a meeting place for book lovers and students. This led to Persson later becoming known as "Bok-Viktor" and in many ways he lived up to the name as he had a huge collection and knew exactly where the books were located.
Viktor Persson in his bookshop on Drottninggatan in Uppsala. Photo: Rolf Nodén. Taken from an almanac printed by RK tryck in 2003.
Viktor Persson in his "second" Bokfenix. Photo: From private collection.
Persson published a number of joke books and other curiosities in mini format on his own publishing house and the bestseller was Svenska invektiv (1963), a list of swear words that was sold in seven editions over three years.
In May 1980, the 18th century house that housed the antiquarian bookshop burned down, but the most valuable books escaped the flames. Bokfenix eventually moved to the corner of Skolgatan-Rundelsgränd.
Image description: Viktor Persson outside his antiquarian bookshop on Drottninggatan in Uppsala, probably 1950s-1960s. Photo: From private collectionThe image is cropped] Click here for an uncropped image
Anna-Lisa Thomson studied at the Higher School of Industrial Arts in Stockholm between 1924-1928 and then in Italy, Austria, Prague and Dresden.
Between 1928 and 1933 she worked at the S:t Erik earthenware factory in Uppsala, designing tea sets in green glaze and ceramic objects with relief decoration. In the mid-1930s, Thomson came to Upsala Ekeby and worked there throughout her working life.
Thomson mainly created art objects in various ceramic materials with pure, often nature-inspired, decorative elements. Among his most famous works are the vase Paprika (1948), which was made in various shapes and sizes, and the urn Lancett (1949). Thomson is represented in the National Museum and in several other museums.
She also painted, and her works were often inspired by nature, with motifs from the west coast where she spent part of the year. Her book Eko av dagars ljusa klang (1953; Echo of the Bright Sound of Days ), with poems and illustrations by Anna-Lisa Thomson, was published posthumously.
Image description: Anna-Lisa Thomson with ceramics, Uppsala 1937, photo: Gunnar Sundgren / Upplandsmuseet. [The image is cropped] Click here for an uncropped image
