Ragnar Granit

Ragnar Arthur Granit Template:Post-nominals<ref name="frs1995">Template:Cite journal</ref> (30 October 1900 – 12 March 1991)<ref>Template:BLF</ref> was a Finnish-Swedish scientist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1967<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> along with Haldan Keffer Hartline<ref name="GranitRatliff1985">Template:Cite journal</ref> and George Wald "for their discoveries concerning the primary physiological and chemical visual processes in the eye".<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name=nobel>Template:Cite web</ref>

Early life and education

Ragnar Arthur Granit was born on 30 October 1900 in Riihimäki, Finland, at the time part of the Russian Empire, into a Swedish-speaking Finnish family. Granit was raised in Oulunkylä, a suburb of the Finnish capital of Helsinki, and attended the Svenska normallyceum in Helsinki.

Granit graduated from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Helsinki in 1927.

Career and research

In 1940, when Finland became the target of a massive Soviet attack during the Winter War, Granit sought refuge – and peaceful surroundings for his studies and research work – in Stockholm, the capital of neighbouring Sweden, at the age of 40. In 1941, Granit received Swedish citizenship, which made it possible for him to live and continue with his work without having to worry about the Continuation War, which lasted in Finland until 1944. Granit was proud of his Finnish-Swedish roots and remained a patriotic Finnish-Swede throughout his life, maintaining homes in both Finland and Sweden after the Moscow Armistice ended the Continuation War and secured Finnish independence.

Granit was professor of neurophysiology at the Karolinska Institute from 1946 to his retirement in 1967.<ref>Template:Cite web
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Awards and honors

Granit was elected an International Member of the American Philosophical Society in 1954.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 1960, Granit was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS).<ref name=frs1995/>

In 1967 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.<ref name=nobel/> Granit said that he was a "fifty-fifty" Finnish and Swedish Nobel laureate.<ref>Ragnar Granit in the National Biography of Finland: "There have since been occasional arguments about how many of the observations that led to the Nobel Prize were made only after Granit arrived in Sweden and about whether he is 'a Finnish or a Swedish Nobel laureate'. Granit commented diplomatically on the matter by saying "fifty-fifty". When he received his Nobel Prize, Granit was indeed a Swede by citizenship; but a significant amount of his experimental work had been done in Oxford and Helsinki, and even in Stockholm his colleagues were still mostly Finns."</ref> He was elected an International Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences the following year.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 1971, he was elected an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

File:Granit-1967-Nobel.jpg

Photograph of the Finnish/Swedish Nobel prize winner Ragnar Granit receiving the prize from the King of Sweden, Gustaf VI Adolf

Death

Granit died on 12 March 1991 in Stockholm at the age of 90. Granit and his wife Marguerite, who died the same year, were buried in a church cemetery on the Finnish island of Korpo.Template:Fact

External links

• Template:Nobelprize including the Nobel Lecture 12 December 1967 The Development of Retinal Neurophysiology
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