List of Uppsala University people

This is a list of notable people affiliated with Uppsala University.

For a list of chancellors of the university, see Chancellor of Uppsala University.

• Stane Dolanc (1925–1999), Yugoslav (Slovenian) politician, head of the security service under Tito
• Onésimo Silveira, Cape Verdean diplomat, politician and writer (Ph.D., Political science, 1976)
• Guðmundur Steingrímsson (born 1972), Icelandic politician

As Uppsala University has one of only two faculties of theology in Sweden, and the older one of the two (the other is in Lund), most Swedish churchmen of note have actually graduated from the university.

• Israel Acrelius (1714–1800), Lutheran missionary to New Sweden; author of History of New Sweden
• Johan Campanius (1601–1683), Lutheran clergyman assigned to New Sweden
• Nicolaus Olai Campanius (1593–1624), priest
• Lars Levi Laestadius (1800–1861), clergyman and botanist, founder of the conservative laestadian movement
• Nathan Söderblom (1866–1931), professor of comparative religion; later archbishop of Uppsala and Nobel peace laureate in 1931
• Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), scientist, philosopher and religious mystic
• Carl Aaron Swensson (1857–1904), American Lutheran minister; founder of Bethany College
• Gustaf Unonius (1810–1902), Episcopalian priest

• Christopher Polhem (1661–1751), mechanical engineer and inventor
• Samuel Klingenstierna (1698–1765), mathematician and physicist
• Anders Celsius (1701–1744), physicist and astronomer; inventor of the centigrade scale, the predecessor of the Celsius scale
• Nils Wallerius (1706–1764), physicist, philosopher and theologian, made important discoveries in the field of hydrology
• Pehr Wilhelm Wargentin (1717–1783), astronomer, first head of the Stockholm Observatory
• Johan Carl Wilcke (1732–1796), physicist
• Anders Jonas Ångström (1814–1874), physicist, eponym of the unit ångström
• Herman Schultz (1823–1890), astronomer
• Tobias Robert Thalén (1827–1905), astronomer and physicist, awarded Rumford Medal 1884 "for his spectroscopic researches"
• Nils Christoffer Dunér (1839–1914), astronomer; professor of astronomy in Uppsala from 1888; awarded the Rumford Medal in 1892
• Oskar Backlund (1846–1916), astronomer
• Gösta Mittag-Leffler (1846–1927), mathematician; professor and Rector at Stockholm University College; founder of the journal Acta Mathematica (1882–); founder of the Mittag-Leffler Institute (Ph.D. 1872)
• Knut Ångström (1857–1910), physicist
• Ivar Otto Bendixson (1861–1935), mathematician, professor and Rector at Stockholm University College (M.A. 1881, Ph.D. 1890)^[3]
• Carl Charlier (1862–1934), astronomer, awarded the James Craig Watson Medal in 1924 and the Bruce Medal in 1933; professor and head of the Astronomical Observatory at Lund University
• Erik Ivar Fredholm (1866–1927), mathematician who established the modern theory of integral equations
• Helge von Koch (1870–1924), mathematician
• Thomas Hakon Grönwall (1877–1932), mathematician best known for Grönwall's inequality, taught at Princeton and Columbia (studied in Uppsala and Stockholm, awarded Ph.D. by Uppsala University in 1898)^[4]
• David Enskog (1884–1947), mathematician, Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology (Ph.D. 1917)^[5]
• Manne Siegbahn (1886–1978), physicist; Nobel Laureate in Physics 1924
• Fritz Carlson (1888–1952), mathematician, Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology and later at the Stockholm University College (Ph.D. 1914)^[6]
• Torsten Carleman (1892–1949), mathematician, Professor and Director of the Mittag-Leffler Institute in Stockholm (Ph.D. 1917)^[7]
• Gunnar Malmquist (1893–1982), astronomer, professor in Uppsala 1939–1959
• Bertil Lindblad (1895–1965), astronomer; professor and head of the Stockholm Observatory; awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society 1948 and the Bruce Medal 1954
• Rolf Maximilian Sievert (1896–1966), physicist, professor at Stockholm University, eponym of the unit sievert (M.A. 1919)
• Erik Björkdal (1899–1952), meteorologist who studied at the Bergen School of Meteorology and was active in the World Meteorological Organization.
• Åke Wallenquist (1904–1994), astronomer
• Arne Beurling (1905–1986), mathematician
• Hannes Alfvén (1908–1995), physicist; Nobel Laureate in Physics 1970
• Kai Siegbahn (1918–2007), physicist; Nobel Laureate in Physics 1981; son of Manne Siegbahn
• Carl-Gösta Borelius (1919–1995), World War II cryptanalyst
• Lennart Carleson (born 1928), mathematician (Ph.D. 1950); professor at UU; later (after retirement) professor at UCLA; awarded the Wolf Prize in Mathematics in 1992 and the Abel Prize in 2006
• Ragnar Stefánsson (born 1938), physicist (1961) and seismologist (Ph.D. 1966); professor at the University of Akureyri
• Björn Engquist (born 1945), mathematician (Ph.D. 1975), professor at the Royal Institute of Technology and Princeton University
• Claes-Ingvar Lagerkvist (born 1944), astronomer
• Johan Håstad (born 1960), mathematician and computer scientist (M.Sc. 1984)
• Giuliano Di Baldassarre, Professor of Hydrology, Director of the Centre of Natural Hazards and Disaster Science, Sweden

• Johan Gottschalk Wallerius (1709–1785), chemist and mineralogist
• Torbern Bergman (1735–1784), chemist
• Johan Gottlieb Gahn (1745–1818), mineralogist, discoverer of manganese
• Johan Gadolin (1760–1852), chemist, physicist and mineralogist
• Anders Gustaf Ekeberg (1767–1813), chemist, discoverer of tantalum
• Jöns Jakob Berzelius (1779–1848), physician and chemist, considered one of the fathers of modern chemistry; invented modern chemical notation and discovered the elements silicon, selenium, thorium, and cerium
• Nils Gabriel Sefström (1787–1845), chemist, discoverer of vanadium
• Johan August Arfwedson (1792–1841), chemist, discoverer of lithium
• Lars Fredrik Nilson (1840–1899), chemist, discoverer of scandium
• Per Teodor Cleve (1840–1905), chemist and geologist
• Gerard De Geer (1848–1943), geologist who made significant contributions to quaternary geology
• Svante Arrhenius (1859–1927), physicist and chemist; Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 1903
• Abraham Langlet, chemist who discovered helium in 1895 together with Per Teodor Cleve (independently from William Ramsay) and defined its atomic weight correctly; later professor at the Chalmers University of Technology
• V. Walfrid Ekman (1874–1954), oceanographer (Ph.D. 1902)
• Theodor (The) Svedberg (1884–1971), chemist; Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 1926
• Filip Hjulström (1902–1982), geographer (Professor 1944)

• Olaus Rudbeckius (1630–1702), a physician and professor of medicine as well as an engineer, architect and an imaginative writer of chauvinistic (pseudo)history
• Olaus Rudbeckius, junior (1660–1740), botanist
• Peter Artedi (1705–1735), naturalist and friend of Linnaeus; "the father of ichthyology"
• Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), botanist, the father of taxonomy
• Students of Linnaeus:
  • Pehr Kalm (1716–1779), botanist
  • Fredric Hasselquist (1722–1752), naturalist and traveller
  • Peter Forsskål (1732–1763), explorer, orientalist and naturalist
  • Daniel Solander (1733–1782), botanist
  • Johann Beckmann (1739–1811), German scientific author, coiner of the word technology
  • Adam Kuhn (1741–1817), one of the first professors of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and thus one of the first in North America; for a time the family physician of George Washington; probably the only American student of Linnaeus
  • Johan Zoega (1742–1788), Danish botanist and economist
  • Carl Peter Thunberg (1743–1828), botanist
  • Johan Christian Fabricius (1745–1808), Danish entomologist
  • Anders Sparrman (1748–1820), physician and naturalist
  • Adam Afzelius (1750–1837), botanist
  • Anders Dahl (1751–1789), botanist, namesake of the dahlia flower
  • Jonas C. Dryander, naturalist and bibliographer, Librarian of the Royal Society, Vice-President of the Linnean Society of London
  • Peter Gustaf Tengmalm (1754–1803), physician and naturalist
  • Erik Acharius (1757–1819), botanist
• Göran Wahlenberg (1780–1851), botanist
• Elias Magnus Fries (1794–1878), botanist, the father of modern mushroom taxonomy
• Alarik Frithiof Holmgren (1831–1897), physiologist
• Gustaf Retzius (1842–1919), anatomist; professor at Karolinska Institutet 1877–1890; member of the Swedish Academy; began his studies in Uppsala, where he took his med.kand., later transferred to KI and Lund University
• Hildegard Björck (1847–1920), first woman to complete an academic degree in Sweden
• Karl Oskar Medin (1847–1928), paediatrician, famous for his study of poliomyelitis; professor at the Karolinska Institutet 1883–1914; completed his doctorate in Uppsala 1880
• Adolf Appellöf (1857–1921), teuthologist
• Allvar Gullstrand (1862–1930), ophthalmologist; Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine 1911
• Robert Bárány (1876–1936), physician, Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine 1914 (professor in Uppsala from 1917)
• Frederik Kugelberg (1880–1963) MD and missionary
• Erik Stensiö (1891–1984), paleozoologist, professor at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm; awarded the Linnean Medal of the Linnean Society of London 1957
• Erik Jarvik (1907–1998), paleozoologist, Professor at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm (succeeded Erik Stensiö) (Ph.D. in Uppsala 1942)
• Arne Tiselius (1902–1971), biochemist; Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 1948
• Inga Hedberg (1927–2024), Swedish botanist and academic
• Hilda Cid (born 1933), Chilean crystallographer
• Hans Rosling (born 1948), medical doctor, academic, statistician and public speaker
• Svante Pääbo (born 1955), evolutionary biologist

• Sven Hedin (1865–1952; fil. kand. 1888; honorary doctorate 1935), known for his travels through Central Asia; last person to be ennobled in Sweden
• Finn Malmgren (1895–1928), Arctic explorer (Ph.D. in meteorology 1927, participated in several Arctic expeditions and died in one 1928)

• Christopher Polhem (1661–1751)
• Gustaf de Laval (1845–1913), engineer, co-founder of the present Alfa Laval
• Jan Stenbeck (1942–2002)
• Karl Jöreskog (born 1935), Professor Emeritus, co-author (with Dag Sörbom) of LISREL statistical program
• Hans Dalborg (born 1941)
• Carl-Henric Svanberg (born 1952)
• Maarit Toivanen (born 1954), Finnish business executive and Vuorineuvos
• Gunilla Asker (born 1962) CEO of Svenska Dagbladet
• Niklas Zennström (born 1966)

• Prince Gustaf, Duke of Uppland (1827–1852), song composer, matriculated 1844 and studied several semesters in Uppsala
• Gunnar Wennerberg, composer, politician and civil servant
• Hugo Alfvén, composer, director musices of Uppsala University
• Wilhelm Stenhammar, composer, director musices of Uppsala University
• Lars-Erik Larsson, composer, director musices of Uppsala University
• Herbert Blomstedt, orchestral conductor
• Petter Askergren (known as "Petter"), Swedish rap artist
• Rickard Westman, member of folk music group Garmarna

• Tage Danielsson, writer and entertainer (matriculated 1949, MA 1955, was vice chairman of Uppsala Student Union)