News archive

The Department of Physiology and Pharmacology celebrated 75 years since its royal inauguration on the Solna campus during 2024. But FyFa's history goes further back than that - and looks forward to many years of community and outstanding research and teaching. On 23 April, the department celebrates with a full day of lectures and a Dragons’ Den.

Medical history researcher and general practitioner Jonatan Wistrand at Lund University is awarded the prize for his outstanding doctoral thesis 'Doctors as Patients', which explores doctors' own experiences of illness throughout history.

Eminent cancer researcher and Karolinska Institutet professor Eva Klein has passed away at the age of 99. She is survived by her and her late husband Georg Klein’s three children. Eva Klein won numerous prizes and awards over the years for her important discoveries in cancer research. She was elected onto the Royal Swedish Academy of Science in 1987.

Two roads on the Solna campus were renamed in September. Retzius väg is now Blombäcks väg after Margareta Blombäck and Birger Blombäck. Von Eulers väg is now Liljestrands väg, in honour of Göran Liljestrand. The change of name is part of the general review of the names of roads, halls and monuments that began at KI a few years ago.

Eleven years ago, KI researcher Beatrice Uusma published her book The Expedition: A Love Story exploring the fate of Andrée’s balloon expedition to the North Pole at the end of the 1800s. This August, she and a group of researchers from the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research and the University Museum of Bergen will be returning to Vitön (Kvitøya) for more answers about the ill-fated expedition. Bea Uusma, at KI’s Medical History and Heritage Unit, tells us more.

A reinterment ceremony for Christina Larsdotter, the famous Sami woman whose remains were rediscovered in KI’s anatomical collection in 2022, was held in Malå on Saturday, 25 May. KI’s request to repatriate Larsdotter’s remains to Malå’s Sami Association and Malå Sami village was granted by the government last September.

The government has decided that KI must return the remains of Christina Catharina Larsdotter to Malå Sami Association and Malå Sameby. A repatriation request was submitted to the government in January by KI’s former president Ole Petter Ottersen. 

Prof. emeritus Rudolf “Rulle” Rigler, an excellent scientist in medical physics and long time member of the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics passed away on October 5, 86 years old.

On 24 August 1922, the pioneering photographer and KI community member Lennart Nilsson (1922-2017) was born. Just in time for his 100th birthday, the retrospective exhibition of his photographic work "Med blick för det stora i det lilla – Lennart Nilsson 100 år" opened at Sergelgatans Konsthall in Stockholm, organised by Jan Broman, founder of Fotografiska Museet, Per Lydmar and Vasakronan.

The remains of a famous Sami woman have been identified amongst Karolinska Institutet’s anatomical collections. Representatives from the medical history and heritage department visited Malå on friday the 19:th of August to present the findings and initiate a repatriation process.

The remains of a famous Sami woman have been identified amongst Karolinska Institutet’s anatomical collections. Representatives from the medical history and heritage department visited Malå on friday the 19:th of August to present the findings and initiate a repatriation process.

On May 18, Dan Jibréus, who travelled to North America on behalf of the KI to return the remains of two persons, returned to Sweden. He describes the trip as very successful, and the two remains, from the Arikara and Miami peoples respectively, have now been returned to their places of origin.

On Monday, 2 May, KI-staff Dan Jibréus boarded a plane bound for North Dakota, and then on to Oklahoma. Two separate remains in specially built boxes were packed in the cargo space, which after several years of delay due to the pandemic, would now be returned.

A diary containing the final entries by polar adventurer Andrée is now to be subjected for the first time to analysis using modern techniques. It is hoped this will solve once and for all the mystery of what caused the deaths of the expedition members on an island in the Arctic Ocean in 1897.
“We’re getting lots of new information, it’s really exciting,” says Bea Uusma, who is leading the project at Medical History and Heritage, Karolinska Institutet.

KI researcher Georg Klein passed away on 10 December 2016. He was professor emeritus of tumour biology at Karolinska Institutet, and a researcher at the Department of Microbiology, Tumour and Cell Biology (MTC). He was, among other things, a member of the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet and in later years became known as an author and award-winning essayist.

Professor Emeritus Folke Sjöqvist and newly appointed Professor Nagihan Bostanci followed different paths to Karolinska Institutet. One became a professor within a brand new research field and the other changed countries when she was appointed professor at Karolinska Institutet.

Opinions have varied on how many professors Karolinska Institutet is to have. The first change took place in 1993, when over a hundred “kingdoms” were abolished.

The SciLifeLab laboratories on the Solna campus stand adjacent to the offices, and only a few paces separate Anita Aperia’s group’s white lab coats from their desks. Pernilla Lagergren and her group, on the other hand, do all their research on computers and so have no laboratory to go to.