Nils Herman Nilsson-Ehle (12 February 1873 – 29 December 1949) was a Swedish plant breeder and geneticist. He was a professor at Lund University and was also a proponent of eugenics. Nilsson was born in

Skurup Skurup is a locality and the seat of Skurup Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of Swe ...

and educated at the

University of Lund , motto = Ad utrumque , mottoeng = Prepared for both , established = , type = Public research university , budget = SEK 9 billion Jonas Stadling expedition to Siberia. He then became a plant breeder at the Swedish plant breeding institute in

Svalöv Svalöv () is a locality and the seat of Svalöv Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden with 3,633 inhabitants in 2010. It is around north of Malmö. Sports The following sports clubs are located in Svalöv: * Svalövs BK Division 4 is the si ...

, which was established in 1886 under Hjalmar Nilsson, working there until 1915. He attempted to induce mutations in seeds by sending them up high in the atmosphere in hot-air balloons in the hope that cosmic rays would alter their genes. He then became head of botany at the University of Lund followed by a position as professor of genetics at Akarp. He noted

polygenic A polygene is a member of a group of non-epistatic genes that interact additively to influence a phenotypic trait, thus contributing to multiple-gene inheritance (polygenic inheritance, multigenic inheritance, quantitative inheritance), a type of ...

trait inheritance. He became interested in human genetic and helped found a State Institute of Race Biology in Uppsala in 1921 under Herman Lundborg which aimed to work on eugenics, the improvement of the genetic quality of the people. When Hitler came to power in German, both Lundborg and Nilsson-Ehle supported the idea of racial purity and the

Kaiser Wilhelm Institute The Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science (German: ''Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften'') was a German scientific institution established in the German Empire in 1911. Its functions were taken over by ...

founded in 1927 in Germany was modelled on the Swedish institution.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nilsson-Ehle, Herman 1873 births 1949 deaths Swedish geneticists Lund University alumni Academic staff of Lund University Eugenicists