This article offers some background information on four prominent Swedes in the fields of science and engineering, although some of them may not be commonly recognised or known to be Swedish.
Hasselblad, Victor (1906 - 1978): Camera designer
You will probably know the product better than the man, since Hasselblad cameras are highly respected in the photographic world for their image quality, durability and reliability - the famous Apollo 11 pictures from the moon were taken with modified Hasselblad cameras. The original company was formed in Gothenburg in 1841 by Victor's great grandfather as a general import/export agency, and among the products it imported were supplies for the new field of photography.
Camera production only started during the Second World War, when Victor Hasselblad was asked to copy an aerial reconnaissance camera 'salvaged' from a German military aircraft that had crashed in Sweden. Hasselblad succeeded in designing and making an improved version, which he sold in quantity to the Swedish military. Only after the war did the company move into the civilian market, with a range of high quality, reliable, hand-held cameras.
Victor sold the company in 1976, just before his death in 1978, to a Swedish group, but since 2003 the majority of the shares have been owned by the Shriro Group of Hong Kong. You can read more about Victor Hasselblad's life and work at http://www.hasselblad.com
Linnaeus, Carl (1707-1778): Botanist
The name of Carl Linnaeus, often called the father of taxonomy, may not be familiar unless you are a botanist, but the system he developed for ranking, classifying and naming organisms (taxonomy) is still in wide use today, albeit greatly modified.
Linnaeus' method grouped classes of organisms (genera) into orders, orders into classes, and classes into kingdoms. Thus the kingdom Animalia contains the class Vertebrata, which contains the order Primates, which contains the genus Homo with its species Sapiens: humans. Linnaeus also developed the Latin twin-name convention that designates a first name to indicate the genus combined with a second to indicate the species: Homo Sapiens. He also first suggested that new genera could be produced through hybridization.
Born in 1707 in southern Sweden, Linnaeus went up to university to study medicine. Since most medicines were then herbal, botany was part of the curriculum. In 1741 he was appointed professor at Uppsala University, where he continued to revise and expand his Systema Naturae, which grew into a very extensive work as more and more plant and animal specimens were discovered through great voyages of discovery, such as those of James Cook. Linnaeus continued this work until his death in 1778, when his family sold his library, manuscripts and collections to the English natural historian Sir James Edward Smith, who founded the Linnean Society of London to house them.
For more information in English on Carl Linnaeus, you can visit the Linnean Herbarium at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, or Linnaeus's botanical garden, near the University of Uppsala. The Linnaean Society of London is still a top-ranking international society for the study of natural history, and is presently planning to celebrate the tercentenary of Linnaeus' birth next year.
Nobel, Alfred (1833 - 1896): Inventor of dynamite
This is one Swede you will have heard of: Alfred Nobel's invention of dynamite made him very wealthy, and what he did with his wealth made him very famous. On his death, he left his fortune to a Nobel Foundation to fund five Nobel Prizes, awarded in Stockholm and Oslo every year on 10 December, the anniversary of Nobel's death.
Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm in 1833. His father was an engineer and inventor who also built bridges and buildings. He experimented with different techniques for blasting rocks: this is of great importance in Sweden, where very hard granite is often found just below the surface. Even simple tasks such as laying pipes or cables up a suburban street often requires blasting. Due to bankruptcy, Nobel and his family had to leave Stockholm to start a new career in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he started a workshop providing equipment for the Russian army and, later, explosive mines for the navy.
Meanwhile, Alfred was receiving a broad education in various countries. In Paris he met the inventor of nitro-glycerine, which is a very powerful but very unstable explosive and he understood that, in order to use it commercially, a way had to be found to stabilize it. In 1852 Alfred returned to work in the family business, which was booming due to its shipments to the Russian army during the Crimean War. Together with his father, Alfred began trying to develop nitro-glycerine as a commercially useful explosive. Then the war ended and Immanuel Nobel was again forced into bankruptcy. He and two of his sons, Alfred and Emil, left St. Petersburg and returned to Stockholm.
There, Alfred Nobel continued his work; this was highly dangerous and in one explosion his brother Emil and several others were killed. Unsurprisingly, Nobel was ordered to move his workshop out of Stockholm. To make nitro-glycerine stable, he tried various additives. He found that mixing nitro-glycerine with silica turned the liquid into paste, which could be shaped into sticks that could be inserted into holes drilled into the rock. In 1867, Nobel patented this material under the name 'Dynamite'. To detonate the dynamite, he had to invent a detonator that could be ignited by lighting a fuse. These inventions, together with diamond drill bits and pneumatic drills that came into use at that time, drastically reduced the cost of blasting rock, drilling tunnels and many other types of construction.
Nobel continued his research into the development of explosives technology as well as other chemical inventions, including such materials as synthetic rubber and leather, artificial silk, etc. Alfred Nobel never married and lived much of his life in Germany and Paris. However, the last five years of his life were spent at San Remo in Italy, where he died in 1896. To read more about Alfred Nobel and the Nobel Foundation, visit [http://nobelprize.org/nobelfoundation/index.html]
Ångström, Anders Jonas (1817-1874): Physicist and astronomer
Anders Jonas Ångström is best remembered as one of the fathers of modern spectroscopy and for the scientific unit named after him. Both he and his son Knut were professors of physics at Uppsala University, and the Ångström Laboratory, named in their honour, today houses most of the physics, astronomy and materials science departments of the University.
Anders Jonas Ångström was born in 1817 and went up to Uppsala University in 1833. He was awarded a doctorate in physics in 1839. His studies covered a wide area, including heat transfer and the earth's magnetism, but above all he was interested in astronomy. He is renowned as one of the founders of the science of spectroscopy, and in particular studied the spectra of the sun and of the Northern Lights. It was this work that led to the unit of wavelength named after him and still used in spectroscopy - the Ångström (1 Å = 1 x 10-10 metres) - although many scientists now prefer to use the nanometre (1 nm = 10Å). He died in 1874.
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