Ragnar Granit


Ragnar Arthur Granit was a Finnish-Swedish scientist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1967 along with Haldan Keffer Hartline and George Wald "for their discoveries concerning the primary physiological and chemical visual processes in the eye".

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 Swedish Normal Lyceum 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 1945. Granit was proud of his Finnish-Swedish roots and remained a patriotic Finnish-Swede throughout his life, maintaining homes in both in Finland and Sweden after the Moscow Armistice ended the Continuation War and secured Finnish independence.
Granit was professor of neurophysiology at the Karolinska Institutet from 1946 to his retirement in 1967.

Awards and honors

Granit was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1960 and awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1967. Granit said that he was a "fifty-fifty" Finnish and Swedish Nobel laureate.

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.