{{confused, McGahn, Gahan, Ghan (disambiguation){{!Ghan, Gan (disambiguation){{!Gan
Gahn is 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 ...
family, one member of which was ennobled in 1809 with the name ''Gahn af Colquhoun''. The family has claimed an unverified origin in a Scottish family Colquhoun, a claim which was confirmed 1781 in a letter by the
Lord Lyon King of Arms
The Right Honourable the Lord Lyon King of Arms, the head of Lyon Court, is the most junior of the Great Officers of State in Scotland and is the Scottish official with responsibility for regulating heraldry in that country, issuing new grant ...
, but on dubious grounds, as later research has shown. A claim that the Swedish noble family ''Canonhielm'' is a branch of this family has also been shown to lack genealogical substance.
Notable members of the family include:
*
Johan Gottlieb Gahn
Johan Gottlieb Gahn (19 August 1745 – 8 December 1818) was a Swedish chemist and metallurgist who isolated manganese in 1774.
Gahn studied in Uppsala 1762 – 1770 and became acquainted with chemists Torbern Bergman and Carl Wilhelm Scheele. 177 ...
(1745–1818), chemist and mineralogist who discovered
manganese
Manganese is a chemical element with the symbol Mn and atomic number 25. It is a hard, brittle, silvery metal, often found in minerals in combination with iron. Manganese is a transition metal with a multifaceted array of industrial alloy use ...
in 1774, and after whom the mineral
gahnite
Gahnite, ZnAl2O4, is a rare mineral belonging to the spinel group. It forms octahedral crystals which may be green, blue, yellow, brown or grey. It often forms as an alteration product of sphalerite in altered massive sulphide deposits such as at ...
was named.
* Henrik Gahn (1747–1816), physician and student of
Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...
, who pioneered the use of
vaccine
A vaccine is a biological Dosage form, preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious disease, infectious or cancer, malignant disease. The safety and effectiveness of vaccines has been widely studied and verifie ...
against
smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by variola virus (often called smallpox virus) which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) c ...
in Sweden in 1803.
* Carl Pontus Gahn, ennobled with the name ''Gahn af Colquhoun'' (1759–1825), military officer who participated in the war in Finland in 1788–1789, the campaign in Norway in 1808 and the invasion of Norway in 1814. He became major-general in 1814 and president of the Martial Court of Appeals (''Krigshovrätten'') in 1824.
* Henrik Gahn (1820–1874), chemist and industrialist, who invented the first
antiseptic
An antiseptic (from Greek ἀντί ''anti'', "against" and σηπτικός ''sēptikos'', "putrefactive") is an antimicrobial substance or compound that is applied to living tissue/skin to reduce the possibility of infection, sepsis, or putre ...
s to be used in Sweden, which he named ''aseptin'' and ''amykos''. In 1867 he founded the company Henrik Gahns AB, sold in 1964 to Barnängen (the latter was bought and is now a brand owned by Henkel Norden AB). The brand ''Gahns'' was sold to a different company and is still used for hygiene products in Sweden and the other
Nordic countries
The Nordic countries (also known as the Nordics or ''Norden''; literal translation, lit. 'the North') are a geographical and cultural region in Northern Europe and the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic. It includes the sovereign states of Denmar ...
.
* Henrik Gahn (1820–1901), industrialist and politician, member of the Burghers' Estate of the
Swedish parliament
The Riksdag (, ; also sv, riksdagen or ''Sveriges riksdag'' ) is the legislature and the supreme decision-making body of Sweden. Since 1971, the Riksdag has been a unicameral legislature with 349 members (), elected proportionally and s ...
1856–1866, and of the First Chamber of the new two-chamber parliament 1874–1892.
* Wolter Gahn (1890–1985), architect, modernist pioneer and co-author of the Swedish modernist manifesto '' acceptera'' ("accept!", intentionally with a lowercase initial, 1931). He was one of the two men behind the new Government Chancery building (''Kanslihuset'') in
Stockholm
Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...
, completed in 1936, but designed earlier and in a classical style adapted to the context of the Stockholm Old Town.