Fritiof Stig Sjöstrand (5 November 1912 – 6 April 2011) was a

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

physician and

histologist Histology, also known as microscopic anatomy or microanatomy, is the branch of biology which studies the microscopic anatomy of biological tissues. Histology is the microscopic counterpart to gross anatomy, which looks at larger structures vis ...

born in Stockholm. He started his medical education at

Karolinska Institutet The Karolinska Institute (KI; sv, Karolinska Institutet; sometimes known as the (Royal) Caroline Institute in English) is a research-led medical university in Solna within the Stockholm urban area of Sweden. The Karolinska Institute is consist ...

in 1933,Fritiof S. Sjöstrand - Biografi
, Karolinska Institutet 200 years where he received his Ph.D.

in 1944. Sjöstrand worked as an assistant at the department of pharmacology, where he first had used

polarization microscopy Polarized light microscopy can mean any of a number of optical microscopy techniques involving polarized light. Simple techniques include illumination of the sample with polarized light. Directly transmitted light can, optionally, be blocked with ...

, he first heard about the new method of electron microscopy in 1938, within which he would become a pioneer.

Manne Siegbahn Karl Manne Georg Siegbahn FRS(For) HFRSE (3 December 1886 – 26 September 1978) was a Swedish physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1924 "for his discoveries and research in the field of X-ray spectroscopy". Biography Siegbahn ...

at the Nobel Institute for Physics had planned to build an electron microscope in Sweden, and Sjöstrand got involved in the project to explore its use in medical research. The main challenge was to produce sufficiently thin samples, and Sjöstrand's method for producing ultrathin tissue samples was published in ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

'' in 1943.Hur anatomiska institutionen blev internationellt centrum för elektronmikroskopi
, Karolinska Institutet 200 years However, it seemed that research based on electron microscopy would be too time-consuming for a Ph.D. thesis, so his 1944 thesis was based on

fluorescence Fluorescence is the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation. It is a form of luminescence. In most cases, the emitted light has a longer wavelength, and therefore a lower photon energy, tha ...

spectroscopy. In 1947-1948, he received a scholarship to further study electron microscopy at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

's Department of Biology. Back in Sweden, he received funding to build up an electron microscopy research laboratory. In 1959, Sjöstrand was both offered a position as professor of histology at Karolinska Institutet, and as professor at

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California S ...

(UCLA). He chose UCLA, because conditions for research and funding were better there. Sjöstrand founded the '' Journal of Ultrastructure Research'' in 1957. Since 1990, the journal has been called the ''

Journal of Structural Biology The ''Journal of Structural Biology'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal concerning the structural analysis of biological materials at all levels of organization and the functional consequences of such observations. The editors-in-chief are A. ...

''. Sjöstrand died on 6 April 2011, at the age of 98. In the recognition of Fritiof Sjöstrand's contribution to the development of electron microscopy, the Annual Sjöstrand Lecture series was set up in 2018 in Sweden. A holder of the lectureship also spends time with students and postdocs at SciLifeLab. The Inaugural Lecture was given by

Venki Ramakrishnan Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (born 1952) is an Indian-born British and American structural biologist who shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Thomas A. Steitz and Ada Yonath, "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome" ...

at the

Karolinska Institute The Karolinska Institute (KI; sv, Karolinska Institutet; sometimes known as the (Royal) Caroline Institute in English) is a research-led Medical school, medical university in Solna Municipality, Solna within the Stockholm urban area of Sweden. ...

. The 2019 lecture was given by

Jennifer Doudna Jennifer Anne Doudna (; born February 19, 1964) is an American biochemist who has done pioneering work in CRISPR gene editing, and made other fundamental contributions in biochemistry and genetics. Doudna was one of the first women to share a ...

. The 2021 lecture will be given by

Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz is a Senior Group Leader at Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Research Campus and a founding member of the Neuronal Cell Biology Program at Janelia. Previously, she was the Chief of the Section on Organelle ...

References

In Memoriam
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sjostrand, Fritiof S. 1912 births 2011 deaths Swedish pathologists Swedish biologists Histologists Karolinska Institute alumni Academic staff of the Karolinska Institute University of California, Los Angeles faculty Swedish expatriates in the United States