Adolf Noreen was born in Östra Ämtervik in Värmland and wrote a thesis on the Frykdal dialect. The thesis deals with the dialect of his home town and was the first dialect description based on scientific principles.
Noreen published language history manuals, for example about Fornisländska in Altisländische Grammar (1884) and about Ancient Swedish in Altschwedische Grammar (1904).
In his great work Vårt språk (Our language)(1903–1924) he presents his ethos of language and presents a basic plan for grammar. Noreen was also an advocate for the spelling reform in 1906.
Between 1887 and 1919, Adolf Noreen was professor of Nordic languages, was elected a member of The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities in 1902, as a member of The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1917 and became a member of the Swedish Academy in 1919.
Together with Johan August Lundell he founded the school Upsala Enskilda Läroverk (now Lundellska) in 1892.
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 a most prominent teacher at Uppsala University.
As a scientist, he became internationally known with the discovery of the retinal current in the eye.
The studies of color blindness made Holmgren internationally famous and in 1874 he described his method of using different colored "sefir yarn dolls", the so-called wool yarn sample, to demonstrate color blindness.
The method was of great practical importance for people in signalling services, such as railway personnel and seafarers. A train accident in Lagerlunda in 1875 was suspected of a train driver not being able to distinguish between red and green. No one had thought that the colour vision could have an impact on railway staff.
The equipment used by Holmgren in the discovery of the retina lattural stream, i.e. the retina's electrical response to light impressions. The equipment consists of a mirror galvanometer and a light catcher with a clockwork that drives the mirror. Photo: Museum of Medicine in Uppsala.
Sefirgarn dolls for carrying out the test of colour vision developed by Holmgren and which became mandatory for all those who would be employed in rail and sea traffic. Photo: Museum of Medicine in Uppsala.
A more macabre study that Holmgren undertook focused on whether beheading was a painless method of execution. Holmgren was therefore present at four beheadings to investigate the method from a physiological point of view.
According to Holmgren, the case studies showed that beheading as a method met the requirements for a painless way of execution.
Holmgren also participated in the debates in Verdandi, and his radical stance appeared in his dictation to the protocol of the consistorio:
"I consider the freedom of thought as one of man's most precious privileges, and the university where the tenet of thought is not primarily, does not, in my view, fulfil its task. To educate the studying youth to thinking men, should, according to my understanding, be one of the university's main tasks.".
Frithiof Holmgren also emphasized the importance of physical education and formed the Students' Sharp Shooting Association, the Students' Gymnastics Association and was chairman of the folk dance association Philochoros and promoter in Uppsala swimming society.
Åke Holm was born in Norrtälje and later became Sweden's foremost arachnolog (spider scientist) and he is seen as the creator of modern spider embryology.
He published significant work in embryology and taxonomy and led research trips to Abisko and the Torneträsk area, East Africa, Spitmountains, Greenland and Malaysia. Holm's spider research focused in particular on the Swedish mountain fauna and on the fauna of the Arctic and East Africa. One of the results was that new species were discovered.
Åke Holm together with participants on one of the research trips to East Africa. Photo: Museum of Evolution in Uppsala.
Olle Hedberg who participated on one of the research trips to East Africa. Photo: Museum of Evolution in Uppsala.
Åke Holm was museum curator at the Department of Zoology from 1947 to 1975 and he was as curator at the Zoological Museum in charge of the collections ranging from the time of Linnaeus and Thunberg.
Anders Gustaf Ekeberg was the son of the ship builder Joseph Eric Ekeberg and Hedvig Ulrica Kilberg.
In 1784 Ekeberg was enrolled at Uppsala University, where he was taught by Carl Peter Thunberg. After graduation and study trips, Ekeberg became associate Professor in chemistry in 1794.
In 1799 Ekeberg was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1802 he discovered the element tantalum (Ta).
An explosion accident in the beginning of the 1800's led to Ekeberg becoming blind in one eye.
One of the scientific discoveries that Ekeberg made was a method for producing a strong, clear and translucent porcelain. The secret behind the method, he took with him to the grave.
The friends carved his name on a stone pillar in the cemetery wall and three words in Latin: Chemico (he was a chemist) Amicitia (friendship) Memor (memory) and the death year with Roman letters MDCCCXIII. Photo: Henrik Zetterberg.
The picture depicts the Ekeberg prize distributed by the Tantalum-Niobium International Study Center. Photo: TIC.
In recognition of Ekeberg's pioneering work, the TIC (Tantalum-Niobium International Study Center) institued an award in 2017 to promote knowledge and understanding of tantal. The award was called the Anders Gustaf Ekeberg tantalum Prize ("Ekeberg prize") in his memory.
Image description: Portrait of Anders Gustaf Ekeberg from Mellin, Gustaf Henrik (eds) 427 porträtter af namnkunniga svenske män och fruntimmer, Stockholm, 1847. Photo: LIBRIS-ID: 1579474. [The image is cropped] Click here for an uncropped image
Fredrik Tamm was born in Tveta in Södermanland and defended 1875 with a treatise on Swedish etymology, which is the doctrine of Proverbs ' historical origins and elaborated Etymological Swedish dictionary through the letter K.
Tamm devoted himself especially to etymological works and Swedish dictionary theory. For many years, Tamm stood in for the ailing professor of Swedish, Frits Läffler. From 1883-1898, Tamm was acting professor of Swedish for a total of ten years.
Uppsala University attempted to establish a professorship for Tamm, but it was not granted by the Royal Council. Maj:t, probably because at the time there was already a professor of Nordic languages and one of Swedish language. 1897 Tamm instead received the name, honour and dignity of professor.
Shortly afterwards, Tamm's wife passed away and he was diagnosed with facial cancer. The operation he underwent left him with a severe speech impediment.
On his birthday, March 30, 1905 he died and Nathan Söderblom held the eulogy in which was said:
"No one could be a better listener than he, this whether it was funny stories or scientific lectures, the latter, which he to the end, faithfully visited, whereever they were offered".
Image description: Fredrik Tamm with his wife Augusta Josefina Elisabeth Lundqvist, Uppsala 1894. Photo: Alfred Dahlgren / UUB. [The image is cropped] Click here for an uncropped image
Johan Bredman, born in Oviken in Jämtland, became Associate professor in mathematics in 1801 and Assistant professor in 1802 at the observatory.
At that time, the observatory was in such a condition, that the practical work could not be carried out satisfactorily. All the instruments were from Celsius' time and by the end of the 1700s the observatory was considered to have been condemned. Bredman was Professor of astronomy in 1811–1841 and also an author of textbooks.
He is mentioned in Wennerberg's Glunterne regarding "another planet whose name not the Bredman knows" (Gluntarne No. 3 Uppsala is best). It was said that Bredman was a skilled lecturer and an interested teacher.
Johan Bredman was the first inspector of Norrland Nation and was honored with the nation's greatest tombstone. He bequeathed money to the observatory and to scholarships for people from northern part of Sweden and other charitable purposes.
Image description: Johan Bredman, oil painting from 1841 by Carl Staaff. Photo: Wikimedia Commons [The image is cropped] Click here for an uncropped image
Fredric Mallet began studying at Uppsala University in 1745 with astronomy and mathematics as main subjects.
In 1754, Mallet started a training trip in Europe, a trip that lasted 28 months. After his return, he was appointed an observer at the Uppsala Observatory on Svartbäcksgatan, a service that he held for 16 years.
By the end of the 1700s, the Celsius observatory had decayed, but the building still remains in central Uppsala. The location in the middle of the city did not make it very suitable for observations. The instruments trembled when horse carriages pulled out on Svartbäcksgatan and the view was obscured by chimney smoke.
Astronomical Observatory, Uppsala. Engraver Fredrik Akrel. Illustration from Busser, Johan B., draft beskrifning on Upsala, Part 2, Uppsala 1769, pp. 112. The house was finished 1741. Photo: UUB.
The same building in 2019, which houses a goldsmith and various university departments. Photo: Henrik Zetterberg.
In 1769, Mallet was commissioned by the Academy of Sciences to study Venus from Pello in the Torne Valley. When Venus passes over the solar disc, was in the past important from a scientific point of view. By studying Venus from several different places on Earth, the researchers managed to determine the distance between the Earth and the sun.
In 1773 Fredric Mallet was appointed Professor of mathematics, a service he held until 1794.
Image description: Portrait of Fredric Mallet. Painting by O. Arenius. Photo: Swedish Biographical dictionary / National Archives. [The image is cropped ] Click here for an uncropped image
Murray began studying at Uppsala University in 1764. Initially he devoted himself to botany, but was increasingly interested in anatomy and dissections.
His anatomy studies led in 1771 up to a dissertation he defended under Linnaeus' leadership. In 1772 Murray graduated as a medical doctor in Uppsala. After his dissertation, Murray began a training trip in Europe and was in 1774 appointed professor of anatomy at Uppsala University.
He returned to Uppsala in 1776 and entered his office. In 1778 Murray became Uppsala's first professor of surgery. In his scientific work, he published a number of dissertations, as well as many other writings.
A significant contribution in Swedish is the Dissertation on the progress of anatomy in more recent times, which formed his voluminous bureau speech in the academy of Sciences in 1794 when he became its chairman.
Page from lecture notes. Murray is the author. Photo: UUB.
Murray's amputation tools for soft parts and for cutting bones. The picture also shows a dissertation by Murray from 1798. Photo: Urban Josefsson, Medical History Museum.
At the Medical History Museum in Uppsala there is a unique collection of surgical and gynecological instruments collected by Adolph Murray. Letters between Murray and Linnaeus are preserved at Uppsala University.
Finn Malmgren was born in Gothenburg. In 1912 he begun studying at Uppsala University where he completed a bachelor's degree in Mathematics, physics and chemistry.
Malmgren later participated in the polar researcher Roald Amundsen's expedition to the glacial sea as assistant to the scientist Harald Ulrik Sverdrup.
On-board the ship Maud, they left the Nome in Alaska in the summer of 1922 to, after spending three and half years on the ice, return to Alaska in August in 1925. Together they managed to collect a large research material and several observations.
Malgren defended, in 1927, a Ph.D. thesis on the properties of the sea ice. Later, Malmgren was associate professor in meteorology.
Finn Malmgren, May 1925, in front of the magnetic observation field. Photo: Stockholm University.
Finn Malmgren, May 1925 at his hoarfrost registrator. Photo: Harald Ulrik Sverdrup / Stockholm University.
At the North Pole expedition with the airship Italia in 1928, it crashed on the ice north of Spitsbergen. After a long walk, Finn Malmgren died and his remains remained on the ice. Part of the expedition was rescued by the Russian icebreaker Krassin.
Malmgren's name is on the Västmanlands-Dala nation's website Burial site and a statue of him, made by sculptor Nils Sjögren, was erected in 1931 in Börjeparken next to the Västmanland-Dala nation. The Department of Earth Sciences at Uppsala University awards a prize every three years in his memory for "contributions to Arctic research".
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.
