Jangfeldt, Bengt

Bengt Jangfeldt, born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1948. Studied Russian literature in Stockholm and Moscow. PhD in 1976 on a dissertation about Vladimir Majakovsky. Lives in Stockholm. The author of biographies of Axel Munthe (2003), Vladimir Mayakovsky (2007), Joseph Brodsky (2010), and Raoul Wallenberg (2012). His books have been translated into several languages. He also works as a translator and has translated the poetry of Mayakovsky (with Gunnar Harding), as well as the poetry and prose of Osip Mandelstam and Joseph Brodsky.
 
Bengt Jangfeldt has received several prizes for his books, including the August Prize (twice) and the Swedish Academy’s Biography Prize.

Molin, Gösta Gideon

Born in Liden, Småland, in 1887, Molin died in Uppsala in 1955.

Norberg, Jakob

 Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of German at Duke University, USA. His articles on modern German literature and political thought have appeared in Arcadia, Cultural Critique, PMLA, Telos, Textual Practice and other journals.

 

 

Linné, Carl von

In 1707, Carl Linnaeus was born to the priest’s family in the parish of Råshult in the Swedish province of Småland. Much later, ennobled in the year 1762, he changed his name to Carl von Linné. His father Nils was interested in horticulture and his son inherited an interest in nature. The parents’ plans for Carl to become a priest were put aside. At this time, the academic study of nature was categorised under medicine, so Carl began to study for a medical degree, first in Lund, then in Uppsala where he lived from 1728. While still a student, he was commissioned by the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala to undertake his first two scientific expeditions: to Lapland in 1732 and to Dalarna in 1734.
In Dalarna, Carl met Sara Lisa Moraea from Falun. Marriage was planned, but the father of the bride insisted that his daughter’s betrothed should first acquire his doctoral degree in medicine and be able to provide for a family. It was at the time not yet possible to become a doctor of medicine in Sweden, so Linnaeus went to Leyden in Holland. In 1735 he defended with acclaim his doctoral thesis on the subject of gluttony. He had written papers which were then successively published, establishing his reputation. The first work to be published was Systema Naturae (1735).
In 1738 he returned to Sweden, set up a practice in Stockholm and where he became one of the founders of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1739, he married Sara Lisa and they eventually had seven children, two of whom died in childhood. In 1741, Linnaeus was awarded a professorship in theoretical medicine at Uppsala University. He was diligent as a professor and bore a heavy workload. He was particularly popular as a teacher and his scientific excursions – his "Herbationes Upsalienses" – were much discussed and attended by students, to the annoyance of his less popular colleagues.
Carl Linnaeus’ lifetime achievements include more than 70 books and 300 scientific papers; he corresponded with scientists all over the world; carried out scientific expeditions in Sweden; developed the botanical garden in Uppsala; taught and inspired his students and, like many other scientists of his day, turned his attention to other scientific disciplines. In addition, he was skilled at marketing his ideas and spreading his enthusiasm. Linnaeus died in 1778.

Tillberg, Margareta

Margareta Tillberg, born in 1960, died in Stockholm in August 2024. She was Associate Professor of Art History at Uppsala University and Adjunct Professor at the Department for Culture and Aesthetics at Stockholm University. Her research interests lay in the history of art foremost in the modernist era, and the history of design in the borderland of rational thinking and social welfare.
Margareta Tillberg had studied in the Soviet Union/Russia for extended periods (Pushkin Institute of Russian Language and Literature, Moscow State University, MGU, Leningrad State University, Moscow Architectural Institute, MARKhI), taught at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, was a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES), and a Visiting Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG). She had MA studies at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design, and held a BA in Social Anthropology, Russian Language and Literature, a MA in Art History, and a PhD in Art History from Stockholm University.
Her published works cover a wide range of subjects in Russian culture and art. Her study Coloured Universe and the Russian Avant-Garde. Matiushin on Colour Vision in Stalin’s Russia 1932, Stockholm 2003, was based on extensive research in Russian archives and was published in Russian as Цветная вселенная. Михаил Матюшин об искусстве и зрение by the Moscow publisher Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie.

Mitchell, Cajsa

Cajsa Mitchell was born in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1945. While working and living abroad in countries like England, the USA and Italy in the 1960s and 1970s she acquired a vast experience of language on different social levels and in significantly different environments.

Since 1989 she is a member of the Swedish Writers´ Union and has, since 1986, been a literary translator from Norwegian and English, translating writers like Lionel Shriver, Jamil Ahmad, Michael Pollan, Unni Wikan, Steinar Sørlle, Jon Michelet, Dag Solstad and Erika Fatland.

She lives in Uppsala where she has also been teaching child welfare, child psychology and education.