Uppsala University - Notable People

Notable People

Uppsala University is associated with 8 Nobel Prize laureates, and numerous royalty, academics and public figures.

As the dominant academic institution in Sweden for several centuries, Uppsala University has ever since its first period of expansion in the early part of the 17th century educated a large proportion of Swedish politicians and civil servants, from 17th century Chancellor of the Realm (rikskansler) Johan Oxenstierna (1611–1657) and Lord Chief Justice (riksdrots) Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie (1622–1686) to the first Social Democratic Prime Minister of Sweden, Hjalmar Branting (1860–1925) and many later politicians. Other alumni are Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961), UN Secretary General who was (posthumously) awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1961, and the Swedish diplomat Hans Blix (b. 1928), who was Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency 1981–1997, of the UNMOVIC 2000–2003, and previously Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs 1978–1979. Hammarskjöld and Blix both graduated from the Uppsala Faculty of Law, as did the Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs Anna Lindh, who was assassinated in 2003.

Most Swedish clergymen, including most bishops and archbishops, have been educated at the university, including, in more recent times, Nathan Söderblom (1866–1931), Professor of the History of Religions in the Faculty of Theology, later Archbishop of Uppsala, and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1930 for his work as leader of the ecumenical movement.

The university became prominent in the sciences in the 18th century with names such as the physician and botanist Carolus Linnaeus (1707–1778), the father of taxonomy, and his numerous important pupils, the physicist and astronomer Anders Celsius (1701–1744), inventor of the centigrade scale the predecessor of the Celsius scale, and the chemist Torbern Bergman (1735–1784). Another scientist from this era is Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), better remembered today as a religious mystic. Several of the elements were discovered by Uppsala scientists during this period or later. Jöns Jakob Berzelius, considered one of the fathers of modern chemistry, received his doctorate in medicine in Uppsala in 1804, but later moved to Stockholm. Uppsala scientists of the 19th century include the physicist Anders Jonas Ångström (1814–1874). During the 20th century several Nobel laureates in the sciences have been Uppsala alumni or professors at the university.

Many well-known Swedish writers have studied in Uppsala: Georg Stiernhielm (1698–1672) is often called the father of Swedish poetry. The poet and song composer Carl Michael Bellman (1740–1795), without doubt the best-loved and best-remembered of Swedish 18th century poets, matriculated but left the university after less than a year. The writer, historian and composer Erik Gustaf Geijer (1783–1847), professor of history, and the poet Per Daniel Amadeus Atterbom (1790–1855), professor of poetry, were principal figures of early 19th century Swedish romanticism. The less than happy experiences of the Uppsala student life of novelist and playwright August Strindberg (1849–1912), resulted in his Från Fjärdingen och Svartbäcken (1877), a collection of short stories set in Uppsala ("From Fjärdingen and Svartbäcken", the title refers to two districts in Uppsala). Other Uppsala alumni are the poet Erik Axel Karlfeldt (1864–1931), who refused the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1918, but received it posthumously in 1931, the novelist and playwright Pär Lagerkvist (1891–1974), Nobel laureate in 1951, and the poet and novelist Karin Boye (1900–1941), for whom one branch of the university library has been named. The Communist leader Ture Nerman (1886–1969) wrote a novel called Olympen, based on his experience as a student in Uppsala. Niklas Zennström, co-founder of KaZaA and Skype is also a former student at Uppsala University. On August 15, 2008 Zennström donated 15 million SEK to Uppsala University for climate research. The late Jan Stenbeck, a Nordic media mogul who controlled Modern Times Group, was also an alumnus of Uppsala University.