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Register of S. Arrhenius' Levnadsrön
MSS 91-103
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Title: S. Arrhenius' Levnadsrön
Collection number: MSS 91-103
Creator: Dahlgren, Niels
Extent: 1 manuscript
Repository:
University of California, San Francisco. Library. Archives and Special Collections.
San Francisco, California 94143-0840
Shelf location: For current information on the location of these
materials, please consult the Library's online catalog.
Language:
English.
Gift of John W. Severinghaus, M.D.
Collection is open for research.
S. Arrhenius' Levnadsrön, MSS 91-103, Archives & Special
Collections, UCSF Library & CKM
"This is a biography of Svante Arrhenius written by his grandson, Dr. Niels Dahlgren, an
anesthesiologist in Lund, Sweden. This text was completed in late 1990. JWS." -inscribed
on title page.
Svante Arrhenius was born in 1859 in Vik, Sweden. After attending the Cathedral School in
Uppsala, Arrhenius studied mathematics, chemistry and physics at the University of
Uppsala. He passed the candidate's examination in 1878 and in 1881 went to Stockholm to
work under physicist Erik Edlund of the Swedish Academy of Sciences. He obtained his
doctorate in 1884; his doctoral dissertation discussed the electrolytic theory of
dissociation. He was appointed lecturer in physical chemistry at the University of
Uppsala in 1884. A travel grant from the Swedish Academy enabled him to work abroad in
Amsterdam, Berlin, Leipzig and Vienna. In 1905 he became director of the physical
chemistry department of the Nobel Institute.
While most of his work prior to 1900 involved contributions to the theory of electrolytic
dissociation, after 1900 Arrhenius devoted his attention to the physics and chemistry of
cosmic and meteorological phenomena. In 1903 he published his
Lehrbuch der
kosmischen Physik,
the first textbook on cosmic physics. He was also concerned
with the theory of immunity, an interest that resulted in two textbooks:
Immunochemistry (1907) and
Quantitative Laws in Biological
Chemistry
(1915).
Svante Arrhenius died in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1927.