Fritiof Sjöstrand

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Fritiof Stig Sjöstrand (born November 5, 1912 in Stockholm , † April 6, 2011 in Los Angeles ) was a Swedish histologist and pioneer of electron microscopy in cell biology .

Life

Sjöstrand studied medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm from 1933, graduating in 1941 and receiving his doctorate in 1945. Initially, he dealt with polarization microscopy , but in 1938 he learned about the new technology of electron microscopy. Manne Siegbahn planned to build an electron microscope in Sweden, and Sjöstrand was involved in the project. He developed a new ultramicrotome technique to produce ultra-thin slices for electron microscopes with minimal distortion. His method was published in a Nature article in 1943 . The first electron microscopic high-resolution images of mitochondria come from him . In 1947/48 he was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on his return founded an electron microscopy laboratory at the Karolinska Institute. From 1949 he was there associate professor of anatomy and from until 1962 was head of the department of histology and professor of histology. In 1959 he became visiting professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he received a full professorship in the Faculty of Zoology in 1960. There he was a founding member of the Institute for Molecular Biology. In 1983 he retired.

In addition to mitochondria, he particularly examined the structure of the retina .

In 1971 he received the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize , in 1967 the Anders Retzius Gold Medal and in 1992 the Distinguished Scientist Award of the Electron Microscopy Society of America, of which he was an honorary member (as well as the Swedish and Japanese Society for Electron Microscopy). He received honorary doctorates from the University of Siena (1974) and from Northeastern Hill University in Shillong (India). He had been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1965 .

In 1957 he founded the Journal of Structural Biology (then and until 1990 Journal of Ultrastructure Research), of which he was editor until 1990.

He was married and his wife Birgitta worked with him in his laboratory. In his spare time he ran short distances and painted.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Date of birth and career dates according to American Men and Women of Science (Detroit 2004), as well as the obituary of UCLA.
personal data
SURNAME Sjöstrand, Fritiof
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sjöstrand, Fritiof Stig (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish histologist
DATE OF BIRTH November 5, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Stockholm
DATE OF DEATH April 6, 2011
Place of death los Angeles