Lennart Möller (24 September 1954 – 19 November 2021) was a professor of environmental medicine at the

Karolinska Institute The Karolinska Institute (KI; ; sometimes known as the (Royal) Caroline Institute in English) is a research-led medical university in Solna within the Stockholm urban area of Sweden and one of the foremost medical research institutes globally ...

Stockholm Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...

, Sweden. He received a doctorate in

Medical sciences Medicine is the science and practice of caring for patients, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pract ...

from the Karolinska Institute in 1988, with a thesis "2-nitrofluorene, in vivo metabolism and assessment of cancer risk of an air pollutant." He was the editor and author of several books in popular sciences and theology covering urban air quality,

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving Cell growth#Disorders, abnormal cell growth with the potential to Invasion (cancer), invade or Metastasis, spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Po ...

environmental medicine Environmental medicine is a multidisciplinary field involving medicine, environmental science, chemistry and others, overlapping with environmental pathology. It can be viewed as the medical branch of the broader field of environmental health. ...

ethics Ethics is the philosophy, philosophical study of Morality, moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates Normativity, normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches inclu ...

, and

photography Photography is the visual arts, art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is empl ...

. He was the deputy chairman of the board for the

Lennart Nilsson Award The Lennart Nilsson Award recognizes outstanding contributions to scientific photography. Honorees are chosen based on the merits of their efforts in scientific imagery. It is administered by the foundation ''Stiftelsen Lennart Nilsson'' and awarde ...

, an international prize in scientific photography. He was a signatory to the '' A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism'' statement issued in 2001 by the

Discovery Institute The Discovery Institute (DI) is a conservatism in the United States, politically conservative think tank that advocates the pseudoscience, pseudoscientific concept Article available froUniversiteit Gent of intelligent design (ID). It was fou ...

, a conservative Christian

think tank A think tank, or public policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governme ...

based in

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is the List of municipalities in Washington, most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the List of Unit ...

, US, best known for its advocacy of

intelligent design Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins".#Numbers 2006, Numbers 2006, p. 373; " Dcaptured headlines for it ...

. The statement expresses skepticism about the ability of random mutations and

natural selection Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the Heredity, heritable traits characteristic of a population over generation ...

to account for the complexity of life, and encourages careful examination of the evidence for "

Darwinism ''Darwinism'' is a term used to describe a theory of biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and others. The theory states that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural sel ...

", a term intelligent design proponents use to refer to

evolution Evolution is the change in the heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, re ...

.. "As I stated earlier, Johnson, Dembski, and their associates have assumed the task of destroying 'Darwinism,' 'evolutionary naturalism,' 'scientific materialism,' 'methodological naturalism,' 'philosophical naturalism,' and other 'isms' they use as synonyms for evolution." The statement's claims have been rejected by the scientific community. Möller was the author of ''The Exodus Case'', a 448-page book based on findings of Ron Wyatt published in 2002 and revised and expanded in 2008. The book expounds Möller's theory about the route of the biblical Exodus from Egypt, in particular that a mountain called Jabal al-Lawz in Saudi Arabia is the biblical Mount Sinai. A review by Swedish archaeologist Martin Rundkvist states that "Möller emphasizes that he is neither a theologian, a historian nor an archaeologist" and concludes with, "The Exodus Case is such an extreme example of pseudo-science that any reasonably well-informed reader will wonder if Möller is joking." A review on the '' Studiengemeinschaft Wort und Wissen'' (Word and Knowledge Study Community) website, whose members take a literal approach to the Bible, stated that it contained such "serious substantive and methodological errors" that it could not be recommended while agreeing that the Exodus took place. Peter van der Veen and Uwe Zerbst specifically criticized his identification of Jabal al-Lawz with

Mount Sinai Mount Sinai, also known as Jabal Musa (), is a mountain on the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. It is one of several locations claimed to be the Mount Sinai (Bible), biblical Mount Sinai, the place where, according to the sacred scriptures of the thre ...

and a number of the geographical locations he thought to be part of the Exodus route.

biographical details

Möller was born 24 September 1954 in Stockholm and died 19 November 2021 in Stallarholmen

External links

PubMed search for Lennart Möller

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Moller, Lennart 1954 births 2021 deaths Academic staff of the Karolinska Institute Karolinska Institute alumni Physicians from Stockholm Academics from Stockholm Pseudoarchaeologists Swedish medical researchers