BIOLOGISTS from Sweden

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Swedish Biologists of all time. This list of famous Swedish Biologists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of Swedish Biologists.

1. Carl Linnaeus (1707 - 1778)

With an HPI of 87.45, Carl Linnaeus is the most famous Swedish Biologist.  His biography has been translated into 176 different languages on wikipedia.

Carl Linnaeus (23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné, was a Swedish biologist and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy". Many of his writings were in Latin; his name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnæus and, after his 1761 ennoblement, as Carolus a Linné. Linnaeus was the son of a curate and was born in Råshult, in the countryside of Småland, southern Sweden. He received most of his higher education at Uppsala University and began giving lectures in botany there in 1730. He lived abroad between 1735 and 1738, where he studied and also published the first edition of his Systema Naturae in the Netherlands. He then returned to Sweden where he became professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala. In the 1740s, he was sent on several journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants and animals. In the 1750s and 1760s, he continued to collect and classify animals, plants, and minerals, while publishing several volumes. By the time of his death in 1778, he was one of the most acclaimed scientists in Europe. Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau sent him the message: "Tell him I know no greater man on Earth." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote: "With the exception of William Shakespeare and Baruch Spinoza, I know no one among the no longer living who has influenced me more strongly." Swedish author August Strindberg wrote: "Linnaeus was in reality a poet who happened to become a naturalist." Linnaeus has been called Princeps botanicorum (Prince of Botanists) and "The Pliny of the North". He is also considered one of the founders of modern ecology. In botany, the abbreviation L. is used to indicate Linnaeus as the authority for a species' name. In zoology, the abbreviation Linnaeus is generally used; the abbreviations L., Linnæus and Linné are also used. In older publications, the abbreviation "Linn." is found. Linnaeus's remains constitute the type specimen for the species Homo sapiens following the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, since the sole specimen that he is known to have examined was himself.

2. Hugo Theorell (1903 - 1982)

With an HPI of 65.77, Hugo Theorell is the 2nd most famous Swedish Biologist.  His biography has been translated into 51 different languages.

Axel Hugo Theodor Theorell (6 July 1903 – 15 August 1982) was a Swedish scientist and Nobel Prize laureate in medicine. He was born in Linköping as the son of Thure Theorell and his wife Armida Bill. Theorell went to Secondary School at Katedralskolan in Linköping and passed his examination there on 23 May 1921. In September, he began to study medicine at the Karolinska Institute and in 1924 he graduated as a Bachelor of Medicine. He then spent three months studying bacteriology at the Pasteur Institute in Paris under Professor Albert Calmette. In 1930 he obtained his M.D. degree with a theory on the lipids of the blood plasma, and was appointed professor in physiological chemistry at the Karolinska Institute. Theorell, who dedicated his entire career to enzyme research, received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1955 for discovering oxidoreductase enzymes and their effects. His contribution also consisted of the theory of the toxic effects of sodium fluoride on the cofactors of crucial human enzymes. In 1936 he was appointed Head of the newly established Biochemical Department of the Nobel Medical Institute, the first researcher related to the Institute to be awarded a Nobel Prize. His work had led to pioneering progress on alcohol dehydrogenases, enzymes that break down alcohol in the liver and other tissues. He received honorary degrees at universities in France, Belgium, Brazil and the United States. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the United States National Academy of Sciences, and an International Member of the American Philosophical Society. Theorell died in Stockholm and is interred in Norra begravningsplatsen (The Northern Cemetery) alongside his wife, Elin Margit Elisabeth (née Alenius) Theorell, a distinguished pianist and harpsichordist who died in 2002.

3. Svante Pääbo (b. 1955)

With an HPI of 64.05, Svante Pääbo is the 3rd most famous Swedish Biologist.  His biography has been translated into 61 different languages.

Svante Pääbo (Swedish: [ˈsvânːtɛ̂ ˈpʰɛ̌ːbʊ̂]; born 20 April 1955) is a Swedish geneticist and Nobel Laureate who specialises in the field of evolutionary genetics. As one of the founders of paleogenetics, he has worked extensively on the Neanderthal genome. In 1997, he became founding director of the Department of Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Since 1999, he has been an honorary professor at Leipzig University; he currently teaches molecular evolutionary biology at the university. He is also an adjunct professor at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan. In 2022, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution".

4. Elias Magnus Fries (1794 - 1878)

With an HPI of 61.29, Elias Magnus Fries is the 4th most famous Swedish Biologist.  His biography has been translated into 39 different languages.

Elias Magnus Fries (15 August 1794 – 8 February 1878) was a Swedish mycologist and botanist. He is sometimes called the "Linnaeus of Mycology". In his works he described and assigned botanical names to hundreds of fungus and lichen species, many of which remain authoritative today.

5. Tomas Lindahl (b. 1938)

With an HPI of 61.17, Tomas Lindahl is the 5th most famous Swedish Biologist.  His biography has been translated into 58 different languages.

Tomas Robert Lindahl (born 28 January 1938) is a Swedish-British scientist specialising in cancer research. In 2015, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly with American chemist Paul L. Modrich and Turkish chemist Aziz Sancar for mechanistic studies of DNA repair.

6. Carl Peter Thunberg (1743 - 1828)

With an HPI of 61.12, Carl Peter Thunberg is the 6th most famous Swedish Biologist.  His biography has been translated into 34 different languages.

Carl Peter Thunberg, also known as Karl Peter von Thunberg, Carl Pehr Thunberg, or Carl Per Thunberg (11 November 1743 – 8 August 1828), was a Swedish naturalist and an "apostle" of Carl Linnaeus. After studying under Linnaeus at Uppsala University, he spent seven years travelling in southern Italy and Asia, collecting and describing people and animals new to European science, and observing local cultures. He has been called "the father of South African botany", "pioneer of Occidental Medicine in Japan", and the "Japanese Linnaeus".

7. Carl Linnaeus the Younger (1741 - 1783)

With an HPI of 60.77, Carl Linnaeus the Younger is the 7th most famous Swedish Biologist.  His biography has been translated into 25 different languages.

Carl Linnaeus the Younger, Carolus Linnaeus the Younger, Carl von Linné den yngre (Swedish; abbreviated Carl von Linné d. y.), or Linnaeus filius (Latin for Linnaeus the son; abbreviated L.fil. (outdated) or L.f. (modern) as a botanical authority; 20 January 1741 – 1 November 1783) was a Swedish naturalist. His names distinguish him from his father, the pioneering taxonomist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778).

8. Olaus Rudbeck (1630 - 1702)

With an HPI of 60.44, Olaus Rudbeck is the 8th most famous Swedish Biologist.  His biography has been translated into 27 different languages.

Olaus Rudbeck (also known as Olof Rudbeck the Elder, to distinguish him from his son, and occasionally with the surname Latinized as Olaus Rudbeckius) (13 September 1630 – 12 December 1702) was a Swedish scientist and writer, professor of medicine at Uppsala University, and for several periods rector magnificus of the same university. He was born in Västerås, the son of Bishop Johannes Rudbeckius, who was personal chaplain to King Gustavus Adolphus, and the father of botanist Olof Rudbeck the Younger. Rudbeck is primarily known for his contributions in two fields: human anatomy and linguistics, but he was also accomplished in many other fields including music and botany. He established the first botanical garden in Sweden at Uppsala, called Rudbeck's Garden, but which was renamed a hundred years later for his son's student, the botanist Carl Linnaeus.

9. Erik Acharius (1757 - 1819)

With an HPI of 60.03, Erik Acharius is the 9th most famous Swedish Biologist.  His biography has been translated into 32 different languages.

Erik Acharius (10 October 1757 – 14 August 1819) was a Swedish botanist who pioneered the taxonomy of lichens and is known as the "father of lichenology". Acharius was famously the last pupil of Carl Linnaeus.

10. Eva Ekeblad (1724 - 1786)

With an HPI of 58.92, Eva Ekeblad is the 10th most famous Swedish Biologist.  Her biography has been translated into 40 different languages.

Eva Ekeblad (née De la Gardie; 10 July 1724 – 15 May 1786) was a Swedish agriculturist and salon hostess. She discovered a method to make alcohol and flour from potatoes, significantly reducing Sweden's incidence of famine. She became the first female member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.