Frithiof Holmgren

1831-1897.

Doctors.

Frithiof Holmgren established Sweden's first physiological laboratory in 1862 and became the country's first professor of physiology at the age of 33. He was also one of the most prominent teachers of his time at Uppsala University.

He became a world-famous scientist with the discovery of the retinal blood flow in the eye.

The studies of color blindness made Holmgren internationally known and in 1874 he described his method of using differently colored "sequined dolls", the so-called wool yarn test, to detect color blindness.

The method was of great practical importance for people in signal service, such as railway staff and seamen. A train accident in Lagerlunda in 1875 was suspected to have been caused by the inability of a dead engineer to distinguish between red and green. No one had considered that color vision could be important for railway personnel.

The equipment used by Holmgren to discover the retinal current, the electrical response of the retina to light. The equipment consists of a mirror galvanometer and a light catcher with a clockwork that drives the mirror. Photo: Museum of Medical History in Uppsala.

Sefirgarns dolls for carrying out the test of color vision developed by Holmgren, which became compulsory for all those to be employed in rail and maritime traffic. Photo: Museum of Medical History in Uppsala.

A more macabre study undertaken by Holmgren focused on whether beheading was a painless method of execution. Holmgren therefore attended four beheadings to examine the method from a physiological point of view. According to Holmgren, the case studies showed that beheading as a method met the requirements of painlessness. When the study was completed, he was also present at the execution of the so-called Alfta murderer in Gävle in 1893.

Holmgren also participated in the debates in Verdandi, and his radical stance was reflected in his dictation to the minutes of the consistory:

"I hold freedom of thought to be one of man's most precious privileges, and the university in which the principle of freedom of thought is not paramount does not, in my opinion, fulfill its task. To educate the young people studied to become thinking men should, in my opinion, be one of the main tasks of the university".

Frithiof Holmgren also emphasized the importance of physical education and founded the Studenternas Sharpshooting Association, the Studenternas Gymnastics Association and was chairman of the folk dance association Philochoros and promoter of the Uppsala Swimming Society. 

 

Burial site: 0125-1141

Image description: Frithiof Holmgren, year unknown. Photo: Unknown photographer / UUBThe image is cropped]
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Robin Fåhræus

1888-1968.

Professor of Medicine, Pathologist.

Robin Fåhræus was born in Stockholm and was Professor of Pathology from 1928 to 1955.

With his epoch-making investigations into the suspension stability of red blood cells (the so-called sink), Fåhræus has achieved international renown.

In his 1921 paper, The Suspension Stability of the blood, the rate at which blood cells sink to the bottom of a test tube and the sinking reaction (SR, "sinking") as a sensitive if non-specific indication of ongoing disease processes in the body was launched.

Together with The Svedberg, Fåhræus contributed to the determination of the molecular mass of hemoglobin.

Examples of his lifelong writing include the books Blood in the History of Medicine (1924) and History of Medicine (1944-1950).

Fåhræus, together with Anders Diös, was responsible for the restoration of the Hall of State at Uppsala Castle.

 

Burial site: 0112-0547

Image description: Robin Fåhraeus at the University House, Uppsala 1955. Photo: Uppsala-Bild / Upplandsmuseet. [The image is cropped]
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Adolph Murray

1751-1803.

Anatomist, surgeon.

In 1764 Murray enrolled at Uppsala University. At first he devoted himself to botany, but became increasingly interested in anatomy and dissections.

His anatomy studies led to a thesis in 1771, which he defended under Linnaeus' supervision. In 1772 Murray was awarded a doctorate in medicine in Uppsala. After his thesis, Murray embarked on an educational journey in Europe and was appointed professor of anatomy at Uppsala University in 1774.

He returned to Uppsala in 1776 and took up his post. In 1778 Murray became Uppsala's first professor of surgery. In his scientific work he published a number of treatises and many other writings.

A notable contribution in Swedish is Avhandling om anatomiens framsteg i nyare tiden( Treatise on the progress of anatomy in recent times), which constituted his extensive presidential address to the Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1794 when he became its president.

Page from lecture notes. Murray is the author. Photo: UUB.

Murray's amputation tools for soft tissue and bone cutting. The picture also shows a treatise by Murray from 1798. Photo: Urban Josefsson, Museum of Medical History.

The Museum of Medical History in Uppsala houses a unique collection of surgical and gynecological instruments collected by Adolph Murray. Letters between Murray and Linnaeus are preserved at Uppsala University.

 

Burial site: 0109-0461A

Image description: Adolph Murray, ca 1787-ca 1835. Engraver, Erik Åkerland. Photo: UUBThe image is cropped]
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Hans Rosling

1948-2017.

Doctors, researchers and educators.

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 Learned to 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.

 

Burial site: 0116-0836B

Image description: Hans Rosling, press photo. Photo: Stefan Nilsson / Gapminder.orgThe image is cropped]
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Carl Peter Thunberg

1743-1828.

Botanist, doctor.

In 1770, after studying with Carl Linnaeus, Carl Peter Thunberg embarked on a nine-year trip abroad that began in the Netherlands. There Thunberg met the most prominent botanists of the time.

Thunberg then studied medicine in Paris before sailing from the Netherlands to Cape Town as a ship's doctor, staying for three years to explore the nature of the area. These studies were documented in Flora capensis (1-3, 1807-1813). Thunberg was the first to describe the flora of South Africa and has therefore been called the father of South African flora.

In 1775 Thunberg continued to Japan where he collected material for his Flora japonica (1784). The work was epoch-making for the knowledge of Japan's plant world and Thunberg received the honorary name Japan's Linnaeus.

Plate of Japanese maple taken from Icones plantarum Japonicarum [plate 5 part V, 1805]. Photo: UUB.

Illustration (frontispiece) from Voyages de C. P. Thunberg au Japon [...], tome I, Paris, An. IV [1796]. Photo: UUB.

In 1779 Thunberg returned to Uppsala and in 1784 succeeded Carl Linnaeus the Younger as professor of medicine and botany.

Thunberg also published Resa uti Europa, Africa, Asia förrättad åren 1770-1779 (1-4, 1788-1793). The collections from the trips were deposited at the University Library.

Carl Peter Thunberg's farm Tunaberg north of Svartbäcken in Uppsala, where he lived for the rest of his long life, was known for its excellent horticultural crops well into the 1940s.

 

Burial site: 0101-0103

Image description: Portrait Carl Peter Thunberg, 1808, artist Pehr Krafft the Younger. Photo: Mikael Wallerstedt / GustavianumThe image is cropped]
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