Svante Arrhenius

1859-1927.

Physicist, chemist.

Svante Arrhenius was born at Wik Castle outside Uppsala, where his father was a steward.

He was one of the foremost natural scientists of his time and was the first Swede to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1903 for his work on the electrolytic dissociation theory from 1887. It completely changed chemists' understanding of acids, bases and salts.

From the mid-1890s, Arrhenius' interests expanded to geophysics and cosmic physics. He considered himself a physicist but his main discoveries were mainly in chemistry.

From 1905 Arrhenius was the director of the Nobel Institute for Physical Chemistry, established by the Academy of Sciences in the same year.

Arrhenius also became internationally known as a popular science writer through the publication of The Evolution of Worlds (1906), Man in the Face of the World Riddle (1907), Smallpox and its Control (1930), The Fate of the Stars (1915) and Chemistry and Modern Life (1919).

 

Burial site: 0152-0062

Image description: Svante Arrhenius, year unknown. Photo: Unknown photographer / Tekniska Museet. [The image is cropped]
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Anders Jonas Ångström

1814-1874.

Physicist.

Anders Jonas Ångström is best known as one of the founders of optical spectroscopy.

Ångström was the first to observe the spectrum of hydrogen, an observation that formed the basis of Balmer's formula and thus provided the experimental foundation for Bohr's atomic theory.

Ångström studied the solar spectrum in detail, in particular the Fraunhofer lines. His study Recherches sur le spectre solaire (1868) contained a precise determination of the wavelengths of the Fraunhofer lines. In addition, Ångström made regular observations at several locations in order to obtain a complete picture of magnetic conditions in Sweden.

Ångström was also the first to investigate the aurora borealis spectrometrically. The unit of light wavelength he introduced, corresponding to 0.1 nanometers, was adopted as the international unit and named ångström.

Anders Ångström was professor of physics from 1858 to 1874 and was elected to the Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1850.

In 1996, the Ångström Laboratory was inaugurated on Polacksbacken, where a number of scientific disciplines related to physics and chemistry have their research centers.

 

Burial site: 0113-0666

Image description: Professor A.J. Ångström, 1862 Photo: Mathias Hansen / UUB [The image is cropped]
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