58 Notable alumni of Karolinska Institute

Yihai Cao, M.D., hM. D., Ph.D., is a Chinese-born Swedish scientist and a professor at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden. He is also an honorary professor or guest professor in Copenhagen University, Denmark; Linköping University, Sweden; Leicester University, UK; Shinshu University, Japan; Shandong University, China; and Peking University, China. He is an internationally recognized and cited researcher in cancer, obesity, diabetes,...

Erik Waller was a Swedish surgeon and book collector.

Alma Maria Katarina Sundquist was a Swedish physician and a pioneering female specialist in the treatment of venereal diseases. A committed women's rights activist, she campaigned for better working conditions for women, addressed problems associated with unhygienic homes and prostitution, and promoted the need for sexual education for girls. She fought for women's suffrage, contributing to the inaugural meeting of...

Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir is a professor in epidemiology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Iceland. Her research focuses on the role of trauma and other life adversities in health and disease development.

Lars Thelander, born 1942, is a Swedish biochemist. He was awarded a Ph.D. degree at the Karolinska Institutet in 1968. and is a professor of medical chemistry and biophysics at Umeå University.

Isak Jundell, née Jundelsky, was a Russian-born Swedish pediatrician. He was Professor of Pediatrics at the Karolinska Institute, a member of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute and was the first editor-in-chief of Acta Paediatrica.

Jan-Åke Gustafsson is a Swedish scientist and professor in Biology, Biochemistry and Medical Nutrition. When he decided to move to Houston, Texas, USA, in 2008, the State of Texas decided to give a major US $5.5 million research grant to the University of Houston, enabling the establishment of the Center of Nuclear Receptors and Cell Signaling under the leadership of...

Johan Erik Jorpes was a Finnish-born Swedish physician and biochemist. He identified the chemical structure of heparin and developed its clinical applications. Jorpes was the professor of medical chemistry in the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm in 1946–1963.

Otto Ivar Wickman was a Swedish physician, who discovered in 1907 the epidemic and contagious character of poliomyelitis.

Johan Axel Höjer was a Swedish physician and public servant.

Anna Magdalena Stecksén was a Swedish scientist, physician and pathologist. She was the first female Doctor of Medicine in Sweden.

Göran Liljestrand, Swedish pharmacologist, known for the discovery of the Euler-Liljestrand mechanism.

Yngve Axel Andreas Larsson was a Swedish pediatrician, medicine professor and diabetologist. He worked for the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia. Later he worked in Linköping, Sweden, where he was in charge of diabetology at Linköping University. Larsson was a member of the Advisory Council for the International Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Diabetes, and worked...

Kerstin Lindblad-Toh is a scientist in comparative genomics, specializing in mammalian genetics. She is the Scientific Director of vertebrate genomics at the Broad Institute and a professor in comparative genomics at Uppsala University. In 2010 she co-founded Science for Life Laboratory together with Mathias Uhlén and acted as Co-Director until 2015. As the leader of the Broad Institute's Mammalian Genome...

Rolf Thomas Perlmann is a professor of molecular developmental biology at Karolinska Institute. In 2006, he became a member of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute. He became an adjunct member of Karolinska Institutet's Nobel Committee in 2008 and was then elected in 2012. He has been Secretary for the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine since 2016.

Yasmin Hurd is the Ward-Coleman Chair of Translational Neuroscience and the Director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai. Hurd holds appointments as faculty of Neuroscience, Psychiatry, Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City and is globally recognized for her translational research on the underlying neurobiology of substance use disorders...

Miia K. Kivipelto is a Finnish neuroscientist and professor at the University of Eastern Finland and Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. Her research focuses on dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

Peter Gösta Schantz graduated as a doctor in medical sciences at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm in 1986, became a professor in human movement sciences at Mid-Sweden University in Östersund, Jämtland, in 2008, and professor in human biology, including the multidisciplinary field of movement, health and environment, at the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences, GIH, in Stockholm, Sweden,...

Pehr Victor Edman was a Swedish biochemist. He developed a method for sequencing proteins; the Edman degradation.

Flavio Andrés Salazar Onfray is a Chilean politician who served as the minister of science, technology, knowledge and innovation from March to September 2022.

Ellenor Andrea Andreen was a Swedish physician, pacifist and feminist. As a physician, she specialized in the treatment of diabetes, combining dietary restrictions with insulin. A prominent figure in the Swedish women's movement, she became a council member of the Women's International Democratic Federation in 1945, later becoming a vice-president. She chaired the Svenska Kvinnors Vänsterförbund (Swedish Women's Left-wing Association)...

Juleen R. Zierath is an American-Swedish biologist. Her research focuses on the cellular mechanisms that correspond to the development of insulin resistance in Type II diabetes. Her other research areas look at exercise-mediated effects on skeletal muscle glucose metabolism and gene expression.

Carl Peter Curman was a Swedish physician and a prominent balneologist. he was also a gifted amateur architect and photographer.

Hedvig Hricak was born in 1946, in Zagreb, SR Croatia, SFR Yugoslavia and earned her MD degree from the School of Medicine, University of Zagreb in 1970. She was Chairman of the Department of Radiology, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center from November 1999 to January 2023. She is professor of radiology at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University.

Johan Georg Harmenberg Åkerman is a Swedish former Olympic gold medalist and a World champion épée fencer.

Karl Oskar Medin was a Swedish pediatrician. He was born at Axberg, Örebro and died in Stockholm. He is most famous for his study of poliomyelitis, a condition sometimes known as the Heine-Medin disease, named after Medin and another physician, Jakob Heine. Medin was the first to describe the epidemic character of infantile paralysis.

Vidita Vaidya is an Indian neuroscientist and professor at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. Her primary areas of research are neuroscience and molecular psychiatry.

Madeleine Olsson Eriksson is a Swedish gynecologist, businesswoman, and philanthropist.

Ewa Helena Björling is a Swedish former politician and a member of the Moderate Party. She served as Minister for Foreign Trade from 2007 to 2014 and as Minister for Nordic Cooperation from 2010 to 2014 in the Swedish Government. She was a member of the Swedish Riksdag for Stockholm County from 2002 to 2014.

Clarence Crafoord was a Swedish cardiovascular surgeon, best known for performing the first successful repair of aortic coarctation on 19 October 1944, one year before Robert E. Gross. Crafoord also introduced heparin as thrombosis prophylaxis in the 1930s and he pioneered mechanical positive-pressure ventilation during thoracic operations in the 1940s.

Karolina Olivia Widerström was a Swedish medical doctor and gynecologist. She was the first female physician with a university education in her country. She was also a feminist and a politician, and engaged in the questions of sexual education and female suffrage. She was chairwoman of the National Association for Women's Suffrage and a member of the Stockholm city council.

Prof Magnus Gustaf Retzius FRSFor HFRSE MSA (17 October 1842 – 21 July 1919) was a Swedish physician and anatomist who dedicated a large part of his life to researching the histology of the sense organs and nervous system.

Dr. Jonas Gustav Vilhelm Zander was a Swedish physician, orthopedist and one of the originators of mechanotherapy. He is known for inventing a therapeutic method of exercise carried out by means of a special apparatus. He began his work in the 1860s. He established the Zander Therapeutical Institute in Stockholm.

Bengt Ingemar Samuelsson was a Swedish biochemist. He shared with Sune K. Bergström and John R. Vane the 1982 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discoveries concerning prostaglandins and related substances.

Katarina Anna-Maria Gospic is a Swedish scientist and author, who grew up in the Akalla district of Stockholm. Between 2002 and 2011 she studied physiology and medicine at the Karolinska Institute.

Axel Hugo Theodor Theorell ForMemRS was a Swedish scientist and Nobel Prize laureate in medicine.

Stefan Einhorn is a Swedish doctor, professor and writer. He is the son of Jerzy and Nina Einhorn, as well as the brother of Lena Einhorn.

Eva Klein was a Hungarian-Swedish scientist. Klein worked at the Karolinska Institute since leaving Hungary in 1947. She is regarded as a founder of cancer immunology.

Erik Wallenberg was a Swedish engineer. He is credited for inventing the Tetra Pak tetrahedron packaging in 1944.

Carl Gustaf Mosander was a Swedish chemist. He discovered the rare earth elements lanthanum, erbium and terbium.

Katia Valentina Elliott is a Swedish journalist. Elliott became known as the presenter of the show Go'kväll on SVT in 2002. Since 2006 Katia Elliott works at SVT Nyheter, she works mostly as a science journalist but has also presented several of SVTs news shows. Elliott is an educated dentist after graduating from Karolinska Institutet. She studied journalism at Stockholm...

Lars Johan Wictor Gyllensten was a Swedish author and physician, and a member of the Swedish Academy.

Ulf Svante von EulerForMemRS was a Swedish physiologist and pharmacologist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1970 for his work on neurotransmitters.

Herman Bernhard Lundborg was a Swedish physician and a race biologist.

Nils Johan Artur Bejerot was a Swedish psychiatrist and criminologist best known for his work on drug abuse and for coining the phrase Stockholm syndrome. Bejerot was one of the top drug abuse researchers in Sweden. His view that drug abuse was a criminal matter and that drug use should have severe penalties was highly influential in Sweden and in...

Per Christian Jersild, better known as P. C. Jersild, is a Swedish author and physician. He also holds an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Medicine at Uppsala University from 22 January 2000, and another one in engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology (1999).

Tomas Robert Lindahl 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.

Torsten Nils Wiesel is a Swedish neurophysiologist. With David H. Hubel, he received the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for their discoveries concerning information processing in the visual system; the prize was shared with Roger W. Sperry for his independent research on the cerebral hemispheres.

Bengt Carl Gustaf Westerberg is a Swedish politician. He was leader of the Liberal People's Party from 1983 to 1995, member of the Riksdag from 1984 to 1994 and Minister for Social Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister 1991 to 1994.

Karl Sune Detlof Bergström was a Swedish biochemist. In 1975, he was appointed to the Nobel Foundation Board of Directors in Sweden, and was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University, together with Bengt I. Samuelsson. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Bengt I. Samuelsson and John R. Vane in 1982, for discoveries concerning...

Rolf Maximilian Sievert was a Swedish medical physicist whose major contribution was in the study of the biological effects of ionizing radiation.

Jonas Filip Ludvigsson is a Swedish physician and epidemiologist. He is a professor at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, and a senior paediatrician in the Department of Pediatrics at Örebro University Hospital, Sweden. Ludvigsson is known for being one of the 47 initial signees of the Great Barrington Declaration.

Mouna Esmaeilzadeh is an Iranian medical doctor, neuroscientist, entrepreneur and TV personality. She has a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Stockholm Brain Institute at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. Her expertise and know-how has been covered on Swedish national television where she's invited to talk about science, technology, neuroscience and investments/entrepreneurship. The previous secretary of the Nobel Committee Alf Lindberg, said that...

Rebecca Gomperts is a Dutch physician and activist for women's rights, in particular abortion rights. She is the founder of Women on Waves and Women on Web, which provide reproductive health services for women in countries where they are not available. In 2013 and 2014, Gomperts was included in the BBC's 100 Women. In 2018, she founded Aid Access, which...

Ragnar Arthur Granit ForMemRS was a Finnish and Swedish scientist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1967 along with Haldan Keffer Hartline and George Wald "for their discoveries concerning the primary physiological and chemical visual processes in the eye".

Elisabete Weiderpass-Vainio is a Brazilian cancer researcher who is Director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a part of the World Health Organization. Her research considers the epidemiology and prevention of cancer.

Hamisi Andrea Kigwangalla is a Tanzanian politician for the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party and Member of Parliament for the Nzega constituency since 2010. After 2015, the Nzega constituency was split, and as a result, he took over as a member of parliament for the newly formed Nzega Rural following the 2015 general elections.