Lectures and seminars Eva and Georg Klein Lecture 2026: Culture and the Brain
Welcome to the Eva and Georg Klein Lecture 2026 on Culture and the Brain, titled “Beneath the Skin: The Artist’s Eye on Illness and Inner Life.”
Speaker
Ole Petter Ottersen, Professor Emeritus, Vice President of the Virchow Foundation, and former President of Karolinska Institutet (2017-2023).
Ole Petter Ottersen received his medical degree from the University of Oslo in 1982. He served as Director of the Centre for Molecular Biology and Neuroscience, a Centre of Excellence at the University of Oslo, from 2002 to 2009. He was elected President of the University of Oslo twice and served from 2009 to 2017. In 2017, he was appointed President of Karolinska Institutet, a role he held until 2023.
He is particularly renowned for his research on the molecular mechanisms underlying acute and chronic neurodegenerative diseases, with a special focus on cellular water balance and glutamate-induced excitotoxicity.
Ole Petter Ottersen has been one of Norway's most highly cited researchers in international scientific journals. His work has been cited more than 38,000 times in the scientific literature, and he has an h-index of 104.
He has received numerous prestigious international awards and appointments. In 2008, he was awarded the Anders Jahre Award for Medical Research. From 2006 to 2009, he served as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Neuroscience. In 2019, Ottersen became a member of the Lancet-SIGHT Commission on Peaceful Societies Through Health and Gender Equality, chaired by former President of Finland Tarja Halonen.
Eva and Georg Klein
Eva and Georg Klein were international pioneers in the then-emerging field of modern tumour biology. At KI's Department of Tumour Biology, which they founded in 1958, they made groundbreaking contributions to tumour immunology, tumour antigens, cancer genetics, oncogenes and tumour suppressor genes, and tumour virology.
Georg Klein passed away on Nobel Day in 2016, and Eva Klein in January 2025, three days before her 100th birthday. Last year, we commemorated their combined bicentenary, as both were born in 1925.
The Georg and Eva Klein Foundation, established in 2005, honours their memory by funding symposia, the annual Eva and Georg Klein Lecture, and research fellowships. In the spirit of Eva and Georg Klein, the foundation promotes initiatives at the intersection of science and culture, fostering dialogue and collaboration between these fields.
Speakers:
2017 Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi
2018 Minna Bissell and Siddhartha Mukherjee
2019 Eric Kandel and Jeff Koons
2020 Robert Weinberg and Douglas Hanahan, EPFL
2022 Harald zur Hausen
2023 Tak Mak
2024 Gerard Evan
2025 Jim Allison
Hosts
George and Eva Klein Foundation (GEKS).
Bankgiro 647-5578 Swish: 1234 275 962
Centre for Culture, Cognition and Health, Karolinska Institutet
Contact
Ingemar Ernberg, ingemar.ernberg@ki.se, 070 5467636