Asta Ödman was born in Gothenburg and was a sculptor and artist.
Ödman studied for Sten Teodorsson and during her studies she became friends with Inger Manne, with whom she painted with for many years.
In the early 1960s, Ödman studied for Fritz Gahn and she was a member of a group of artists who sculpted and painted.
Ödman had a number of own exhibitions. She was also posthumously represented with several works in the Norrköping art museum's compilation exhibition "Female Artists" from 2013.
In Norrköping there are also public works created by Asta Ödman, for example in the town hall and the concert hall De Geerhallen.
Image description: Asta Ödman with sculptures. Photo: Mikael Strand. The photo was first published in Norrköpings Tidningar. [The image is cropped] Click here for an uncropped image
Victor Clifton Martyn, known as Topper Martyn, was born in England and was a juggler and illusionist. In the 1960s, Martyn settled in Uppsala with his wife.
Topper Martyn made his stage debut in 1938 as a juggler and had a mixed program with elements of juggling, comedy and magic. Martyn received several awards for his artistry. In 1970 he became the world champion of comical magic in Amsterdam.
In 1996, Martyn was honored with the English Carlton Comedy Prize. He has received the French award Mandrake d'or and a gold medal by Asahi Television (Japan).
In addition to performing in 30 different countries, he played the wizard's role in the children's musical Alfons and the Wizard, based on Gunilla Bergström's book Hokus Pokus Alfons Åberg. Topper Martyn also appeared in TV productions, such as SVT's Christmas calendar from 1984 – Julstrul with Staffan & Bengt.
Burial site: 0406-0001 (Memorial grove, The Old cemetery)
Image description: Topper Martyn, unknown year. Photo: Swedish Magic-Archive. [The image is cropped] Click here for an uncropped image
Lars Erstrand was one of the big names in Swedish jazz during the 20th century. He became "Mister Swing" with the jazz audience and was a heavy name in both Swedish and international jazz.
He started playing the piano but switched to vibraphone after being influenced by vibrafonist Lionel Hampton's play in Benny Goodman's orchestra.
From the 1960s and many years to come, Erstrand collaborated with clarinetist Ove Lind.
The international breakthrough came in the 1970s when he played with Benny Goodman and later with clarinetists Bob Wilber and "Peanuts" Hucko.
Lars Erstrand also performed with Sven Asmussen and Alice Babs and played from the 1990s together with Arne Domnerus and in the quartet Swedish Swing Society.
Ebba Ruzsica Sörbom was born as Ruzsica Schreiber in a Jewish family in Novi Sad, former Yugoslavia. As a child, she spoke German, Hungarian and Serbian.
In 1944, Sörbom was taken to concentration camps where her mother and younger brother were killed in the gas chambers. After all, Sörbom survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen and came to Sweden in 1945.
She studied drama at Uppsala University, worked with drama therapy at Ulleråker Hospital and informed about the Holocaust in schools.
In 1994 Sörbom received a cultural scholarship from the municipality of Uppsala and in 1997 a scholarship from the Writers' Foundation to study at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Vienna.
The debut book "Bortom minnet, bortom glömskan" came out in 1988. Ebba Sörbom has, through her poetry, portrayed personal memories of the concentration camps and given voice to the survivors.
Margit Sahlin was one of Sweden's first three female priests and ordained in 1960 when the Swedish church, through a Council decision, let women become priests. A new law was made in 1958 and came into force in 1959.
Prior to that she had acquired a broad academic background and a doctorate in Romance languages about the Church dance and the Folk dance song, La Carole médiévale et ses rapports avec l´Église (the medieval dance and its contact with the church). Already in 1940, she is interdisciplinary in her dissertation.
Sahlin took the initiative to the formation of Katharina foundation and was its director for a total of 34 years. The foundation is described as a meeting place for dialogue between church and society.
Sahlin was secretary of the Swedish Church's central Council in 1945-1970 and was appointed honorary Doctorate of Theology in Uppsala in 1978.
In the 1970s she was also vicar of the Engelbrekt parish in Stockholm. She performed a pioneering work through the formation of the Diocese Women's council around the country and its umbrella organization ecclesiastical Women's Council (today women in the Swedish church). In 1995 she received the Equality Prize from the Minister for Equality Marita Ulvskog.
Among the several books Margit Sahlin has written are Evangelisation (1947), Man and Woman in the Church of Christ (1950), The Service of the Word in a Changed World (1959), Time for Rethinking (1980), With Peter (1982), Hurdan is God (1985), The Secretive Book. Reading the Bible Today (1994) and Jesus. The Secret of God (1999).
The Margit Sahlin Academy was established in 2015 and is the platform for exchange of views between science, society, culture, and Church in Margit Sahlin's spirit.
Image description: Margit Sahlin at her summer house in Dalarna, unknown year. Photo: Ulf Palm. [The image is cropped] Click here for an uncropped image
Sonja Lyttkens became in 1956 the second woman in Sweden with a doctorate in mathematics on a doctoral thesis that dealt with harmonic analysis.
In 1963 she became the Country's first lecturer in mathematics, a service she held until 1984. Lyttkens was also involved in the work to improve women's conditions in the academic world.
In addition to her work, Lyttkens devoted herself to watercolor painting and had already had several exhibitions before she retired. Her watercolours are represented at the Swedish public art Agency.
As recently as 1986, Lyttkens published a work: General Tauberian Theorems connected with a Theorem of Korenblum. After retiring, Lyttkens devoted herself entirely to watercolor painting.
Image description: Sonja Lyttkens at the Lake Vin, unknown year. Photo: From private collection. [The image is cropped] Click here for an uncropped image
The first four years Hans Rosling lived in the district of Luthagen and then moved the family to the Svartbäcken district in Uppsala. After graduation, Rosling studied statistics and medicine at Uppsala University. The interest in public health science led, during a trip in Asia 1972, to a course in social medicine at St. Johns Medical College in Bangalore, India.
After a medical degree in 1975 and work as an AT-doctor in Hudiksvall, he trained further and acquired competence in the centre of Medicine at Uppsala University in 1977.
During the years 1979-1981 the spouses worked in Nacala Porto in northern Mozambique, where Hans was a district doctor and his wife, Agneta was midwife. In the Nacala district, an epidemic erupted in 1981, of a previously unknown spasmodic paralysis, with over 1 500 victims, whereof most women and children. The paralysis was linked to a highly poor and highly one-sided diet consisting of a toxic form of manioc (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 outbreaks of Konzo in other African countries.
During the years 1983-1996, Rosling worked as a teacher and researcher at Uppsala University in collaboration with several universities in Africa and Asia. He was appointed in 1997 Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.
in 1999 Rosling began lecturing with a new kind of animated bubble chart that showed the World's Socio-economic state and development 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 complicated statistics about the World's development comprehensible to the general public, decision makers and opinion-formers. The lectures spread through web and TV worldwide, 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 improves the world and that we can eradicate extreme poverty and reduce CO2 emissions, Rosling pointed out that it is the richest billion of the earth's population that first and foremost must reduce CO2 emissions because they account for half of them.
Hans Rosling's memoirs How I Learned to understand the world, written together with the journalist Fanny Härgestam, was published posthumously in 2017 and Factfulness, written in collaboration with Ola and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, released in 2018.
Viktor Persson, nicknamed "Book Viktor", was a famous bookseller and a well-known Uppsala profile. Viktor Persson lived on Övre Slottsgatan in Uppsala and in the small apartment he shared the space with his aquariums and many books.
He established, with the support of his father archaeologist Axel W Persson, in the 1950s a bookstore on Drottninggatan 3 near the political knot called Bokfenix, which became a meeting point for book friends and students. This led to Persson becoming known as "Book-Viktor" and in several ways he lived up to the name because he had a large collection, and also knew exactly where the books were placed.
Viktor Persson in his bookstore on Drottninggatan in Uppsala. Photo: Rolf Maryam. Retrieved from a almanac printed by RK Press 2003.
Viktor Persson in his "second" Bokfenix. Photo: From private collection.
Persson published some joke books and other curiosities in miniature on his own publishing and the best-seller was Swedish invective (1963), a swearing list that for three years was sold in seven editions.
In May 1980, the 1800-century building that housed the bookshop was burned down, however the most valuable books escaped the flames. Bokfenix eventually moved to the corner Skolgatan-Rundelsgränd.
Image description: Viktor Persson outside his antiquarian bookshop at Drottninggatan in Uppsala, probably 1950-1960's. Photo: From private collection. [The image is cropped] Click here for an uncropped image
Mari Simmulson was born in St. Petersburg by Estonian parents and received her sculptor training at the state Art school in Tallinn. In the 1930s she practiced at the Finnish porcelain factory Arabia.
In 1944 Simmulson moved to Sweden and began working together with Wilhelm Kåge at Gustavsberg Porcelain. Mari Simmulson was active at Gustavsberg until 1949 and then returned to Upsala Ekeby where her most remembered production was created.
Characteristic of Simmulsons art are imaginative, colourful and decorative figures, vases and reliefs as well as free sculptural pieces, such as "Balinese", which was quickly sold out and "The Boy on the turtle" that was made for many years.
Simmulson also performed more decorative assignments and several of her works are exhibited at the Uppsala Art Museum.
"Mari Simmulson exhibits a new collection, Presenta AB, Östra Ågatan 39, Uppsala 1959. Photography: Uppsala-Bild / Upplandsmuseet.
A plate performed by Mari Simmulson around 1950. Square with rounded corners and sides. Earthenware with white glaze and decor in pastel colors. Photography: Olle Norling / Upplandsmuseet.
Burial site: 0406-0001 (Memorial grove, The Old cemetery)
Image description: Mari Simmulson, Uppsala 1960. Photo: Uppsala-Bild / Upplandsmuseet. [The image is cropped] Click here for an uncropped image
