Ebba Ruzsica Sörbom was born Ruzsica Schreiber to a Jewish family in Novi Sad, former Yugoslavia. As a child she spoke German, Hungarian and Serbian.
In 1944, Sörbom was taken to a concentration camp where his mother and younger brother were gassed. Despite everything, 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 provided information about the Holocaust in schools.
In 1994, Sörbom received a cultural scholarship from Uppsala Municipality and in 1997 a scholarship from the Swedish Writers' Fund to study at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Vienna.
Her debut book Bortom minnet, bortomglömskan was published in 1988. Through her poetry, Ebba Sörbom has reflected personal memories of the concentration camps and given voice to the survivors.
Carl David af Wirsén was born in Vallentuna and later in life became an associate professor of literary history in 1868 and a lecturer in Swedish and Latin at the Högre Allmänna Löroverket in Uppsala in 1870.
Wirsén published Dikter (1876) and later a further six volumes of traditional idyllic poetry and several collections of religious poems.
The cemetery in Uppsala was honored with a poem and Wirsén wrote the text of the hymn "En vänlig grönskas rika dräkt" (Swedish Hymnal, hymn 201).
Wirsén was elected a member of the Swedish Academy in 1879 and became its permanent secretary in 1884. In this position, with his pronounced conservatism, he came to adopt an attitude that was dismissive of contemporary literature.
As a literary reviewer for Post- och Inrikes Tidningar and Vårt Land, Wirsén was able to express a reactionary view of literature for many years. A selection of his reviews can be found in Kritiker (1901).
Image description: Carl David af Wirsén, Stockholm ca 1880-ca 1890. Photo: Johannes Jaeger / UUBThe image is cropped] Click here for an uncropped image
Johanne Grieg Cederblad was born in Bergen, Norway.
In 1933, she settled in Uppsala and was very involved in public education. She also worked with the elderly and patients in psychiatric hospitals. Grieg Cederblad was also a children's author and lecturer.
Grieg Cederblad was also a translator of Swedish fiction into Norwegian from the time she arrived in Sweden until the late 1940s. The job was given to her by her brother Harald (founder, major owner and CEO of Gyldendal Norsk Forlag). She also wrote articles for Alle Kvinners Blad.
Johanne Grieg Cederblad and Bothild Fredriksson examine clothes collected by the Swedish Norwegian Aid. The picture is published in UNT 1940. Photo: Paul Sandberg / Upplandsmuseet.
A memorial party for Nordahl Grieg in Stockholm in 1944. Pictured, from left: Carl Cederblad, Uppsala, Mrs. Johanne Grieg Cederblad, Minister Bull, Sigurd Hoel and theatre manager Hans Jacob Nielsen. Photo: National Archives Norway.
During the war years and the German occupation of Norway, Grieg Cederblad was very active in the Norway relief effort. In 1946, she was awarded the Haakon VII Cross of Freedom for her work.
Rosalie Olivecrona was one of the pioneers of the Swedish women's movement. She made significant contributions as a social commentator and women's rights campaigner.
In 1857, Olivecrona published a number of articles in Aftonbladet under the heading 'En ropandes röst i öknen'. The articles defended Fredrika Bremer's novel Hertha, which was a contribution to the debate on the authority of unmarried women.
Together with Sophie Adlersparre, she founded the Tidskrift för hemmet (Journal for the Home ) in 1859, where she published a number of texts. Internationally, she held several positions in the growing female public sphere.
Olivecrona had the main responsibility for the exhibition on women's handicrafts at the World Exhibition in Vienna in 1873 and had similar assignments in Philadelphia, Paris and Chicago.
Rosalie Olivecrona's literary career began in the 1840s with poems and short stories in Göteborgs Handels- och sjöfartstidning under the pseudonym La Straniera. Her poetry collection Skogsblommor was published in 1855, and later in life she published the study Mary Carpenteroch hennes verksamhet (1887) and Spridda blad (1889).
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.
Sven Anders Hägg started as an apprentice shoemaker at the age of 10 and received his journeyman's certificate in 1840. Between 1845-1848, Hägg lived in Stockholm, St. Petersburg and Paris, where he witnessed the February Revolution.
Hägg came to Uppsala in 1848 and became a master craftsman for cobbler Lindgren's widow at Östra Ågatan 45. Hägg took over the workshop in 1852 and became a citizen of Uppsala. In the same year he founded the Allmänna sjuk- och begravningshjälpen in connection with the Hantverksföreningen and was a member of the city council from 1862-1866.
Hägg was a devoted teetotaler but liked to go to the theater, which was said to be "his only pleasure". As an author, he published The History of Footwear, Market Trade in the Cities and Description of the Old Cemetery in Uppsala.
On his 67th birthday, Hägg was presented with the King's gold medal of the 5th magnitude for civic merit by County Governor Adolf Hamilton.
Hägg had his farm at Gräsgränden next to the current mouth of Bangårdsgatan at Fyrisån. In the book about Upsala cemetery he writes about his children: "Two children, a boy close to two years and a girl at the age of four, are buried here".
Barbro Holmdahl was a teacher at Vårdhögskolan and a trained nurse at Uppsala sjuksköterskehems sjuksköterskola. In 1990, she received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Social Sciences at Uppsala University. Before that, Holmdahl had trained as a psychologist.
Her books include Boken om Henrik (1986), which describes the illness and death of her own son. Other books she has published include Tusen år i det svenska barnets historia (2000) and Sjuksköterskans historia (1994).
One of the many ways she educated her students was to take them on a tour of Uppsala and tell them about the medical institutions and poorhouses of the time. She also taught crisis management.
Olof Eneroth is considered a pioneer in Swedish horticulture and has been called "the father of Swedish pomology".
In his horticulture, Eneroth devoted himself to the study of different apple varieties. As director of the Swedish Horticultural Society's school and its gardens between 1858-1863, he worked for the development of the art of gardening and for the introduction of gardening as a subject at folk schools, seminaries and agricultural schools.
In 1864-1866 Eneroth published Handbok i svensk pomologi.
He also advocated good public education in a general public school, and in his work Om folkskolan i Sverige (1863-1869) he developed his ideas further.
Eneroth bequeathed a substantial sum of money to Stockholm University for the establishment of a professorship in pedagogy.
Image description: Olof Eneroth, woodcut. Photo: Swedish Biographical Dictionary / National ArchivesThe image is cropped] Click here for an uncropped image
Lars "Lasse" Eriksson was born in Piteå, and moved to Uppsala at a young age.
He started his theater career in the 1970s when he played with Panikteatern in Uppsala.
Eriksson became known to TV audiences in the early 1980s with her observations and as a presenter of various entertainment programs.
Eriksson was also known as a stand-up comedian and published several books. In addition to his participation in a number of anthologies, he published humorous books, such as De norrbottniska satansverserna (2006) and I huvudet på en orolig komiker (2011).
Lasse Eriksson died on stage during a performance at Reginateatern in Uppsala.
Gurli Taube worked as a typist at the university library, became a librarian in 1944, head librarian in 1953 and head of the maps and plans department.
Taube published a number of historical works, such as Från gångna tiders Uppsala (1950) and Ett svunnet Uppsala (1966).
Gurli Taube was also responsible for the cultural history texts in Ett bildverk om Uppsala (1954).
Image description: Gurli Taube when Gabriela Mistral came to visit, Uppsala 1945. Photo: Uppsala-Bild / Upplandsmuseet. [The image is cropped] Click here for an uncropped image
