Gunnar Säve-Söderbergh was a Swedish

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 palaeontologist and geologist

Geologist

A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth as well as the processes and history that has shaped it. Geologists usually engage in studying geology. Geologists, studying more of an applied science than a theoretical one, must approach Geology using...

. Säve-Söderbergh was born at Falun

Falun

Falun is a city and the seat of Falun Municipality in Dalarna County, Sweden, with 36,447 inhabitants in 2005. It is also the capital of Dalarna County...

, the son of the neurologist

Neurologist

A neurologist is a physician who specializes in neurology, and is trained to investigate, or diagnose and treat neurological disorders.Neurology is the medical specialty related to the human nervous system. The nervous system encompasses the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nerves. A specialist...

 Gotthard Söderbergh and Inga Säve. He passed his G.C.E.

General Certificate of Education

The General Certificate of Education or GCE is an academic qualification that examination boards in the United Kingdom and a few of the Commonwealth countries, notably Sri Lanka, confer to students. The GCE traditionally comprised two levels: the Ordinary Level and the Advanced Level...

 at Gothenburg

Gothenburg

Gothenburg is the second-largest city in Sweden and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated on the west coast of Sweden, the city proper has a population of 519,399, with 549,839 in the urban area and total of 937,015 inhabitants in the metropolitan area...

 in 1928 and took bachelor's

Bachelor's degree

A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...

 and licentiate

Licentiate

Licentiate is the title of a person who holds an academic degree called a licence. The term may derive from the Latin licentia docendi, meaning permission to teach. The term may also derive from the Latin licentia ad practicandum, which signified someone who held a certificate of competence to...

's degrees at Uppsala University

Uppsala University

Uppsala University is a research university in Uppsala, Sweden, and is the oldest university in Scandinavia, founded in 1477. It consistently ranks among the best universities in Northern Europe in international rankings and is generally considered one of the most prestigious institutions of...

 in 1931 and 1933, respectively. He was appointed professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

 of geology

Geology

Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...

, historical geology

Historical geology

Historical geology is the use of the principles of geology to reconstruct and understand the history of the Earth. It focuses on geologic processes that change the Earth's surface and subsurface; and the use of stratigraphy, structural geology and paleontology to tell the sequence of these events...

 in particular, at Uppsala in 1937.

Säve-Söderbergh participated in Lauge Koch

Lauge Koch

Lauge Koch was a Danish geologist and Arctic explorer.He was the renowned leader of 24 Danish government expeditions to Greenland, and the central character in the Lauge Koch Controversy, an international and intra-national conflict...

's Three-year Expedition to East Greenland

Three-year Expedition to East Greenland

The Three-year Expedition was an exploratory expedition to East Greenland that lasted from 1931 to 1934 financed by the Carlsberg Foundation and the Danish state. It was led by Lauge Koch. The other participants were Danish and Swedish geographers, geologists, archaeologists, zoologists and...

 in 1931-1934 and 1936. He brought back fossil

Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

s of Ichthyostega

Ichthyostega

Ichthyostega is an early tetrapod genus that lived at the end of the Upper Devonian period . It was a labyrinthodont, one of the first fossil record of tetrapods. Ichthyostega possessed lungs and limbs that helped it navigate through shallow water in swamps...

, by then the earliest known tetrapod

Tetrapod

Tetrapods are vertebrate animals having four limbs. Amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals are all tetrapods; even snakes and other limbless reptiles and amphibians are tetrapods by descent. The earliest tetrapods evolved from the lobe-finned fishes in the Devonian...

, and published an extensive preliminary report on it in 1932. He also collected fossils on Cyprus (1930), in England and Scotland (1934), and Estonia (1936). Säve-Söderbergh went on to study the biostratigraphy

Biostratigraphy

Biostratigraphy is the branch of stratigraphy which focuses on correlating and assigning relative ages of rock strata by using the fossil assemblages contained within them. Usually the aim is correlation, demonstrating that a particular horizon in one geological section represents the same period...

 of the East Greenland Palaeozoic and the problem of skull bone homologies

Homology (biology)

Homology forms the basis of organization for comparative biology. In 1843, Richard Owen defined homology as "the same organ in different animals under every variety of form and function". Organs as different as a bat's wing, a seal's flipper, a cat's paw and a human hand have a common underlying...

 among fishes and tetrapods. He also investigated the cranial anatomy of Triassic

Triassic

The Triassic is a geologic period and system that extends from about 250 to 200 Mya . As the first period of the Mesozoic Era, the Triassic follows the Permian and is followed by the Jurassic. Both the start and end of the Triassic are marked by major extinction events...

 stegocephalia

Stegocephalia

Stegocephalia is an old term for early amphibians, comprising all pre-Jurassic and some later extinct large amphibians of more or less salamander-like build...

ns from East Greenland and Spitsbergen

Spitsbergen

Spitsbergen is the largest and only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. Constituting the western-most bulk of the archipelago, it borders the Arctic Ocean, the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland Sea...

 and of Devonian

Devonian

The Devonian is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic Era spanning from the end of the Silurian Period, about 416.0 ± 2.8 Mya , to the beginning of the Carboniferous Period, about 359.2 ± 2.5 Mya...

 lungfish

Lungfish

Lungfish are freshwater fish belonging to the Subclass Dipnoi. Lungfish are best known for retaining characteristics primitive within the Osteichthyes, including the ability to breathe air, and structures primitive within Sarcopterygii, including the presence of lobed fins with a well-developed...

; he intended to carry out a broad study of both Recent and fossil lungfish.

Other works by Säve-Söderbergh include a comparative study of the lateral line system

Lateral line

The lateral line is a sense organ in aquatic organisms , used to detect movement and vibration in the surrounding water. Lateral lines are usually visible as faint lines running lengthwise down each side, from the vicinity of the gill covers to the base of the tail...

 and an analysis of the trigeminal musculature in lower tetrapods.

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

 thwarted Säve-Söderbergh’s career. He died at Solbacken, a sanatorium

Sanatorium

A sanatorium is a medical facility for long-term illness, most typically associated with treatment of tuberculosis before antibiotics...

 in Dalarna

Dalarna

', English exonym: Dalecarlia, is a historical province or landskap in central Sweden. Another English language form established in literature is the Dales. Places involving the element Dalecarlia exist in the United States....

. His research on the Devonian tetrapod Ichthyostega was continued by Erik Jarvik

Erik Jarvik

Anders Erik Vilhelm Jarvik was a Swedish palaeozoologist who worked extensively on the sarcopterygian fish Eusthenopteron...

. Säve-Söderbergh was made an honorary doctor at Uppsala in 1942 and was elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences or Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. The Academy is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization which acts to promote the sciences, primarily the natural sciences and mathematics.The Academy was founded on 2...

 in 1948. He was the brother of egyptologist Torgny Säve-Söderbergh (1914–1998) and father of Bengt Säve-Söderbergh (b. 1940), former ambassador

Ambassador

An ambassador is the highest ranking diplomat who represents a nation and is usually accredited to a foreign sovereign or government, or to an international organization....

 and Secretary of State

Secretary of State

Secretary of State or State Secretary is a commonly used title for a senior or mid-level post in governments around the world. The role varies between countries, and in some cases there are multiple Secretaries of State in the Government....

.

Biography

[By Erik Jarvik

Erik Jarvik

Anders Erik Vilhelm Jarvik was a Swedish palaeozoologist who worked extensively on the sarcopterygian fish Eusthenopteron...

.] Gunnar Säve-Söderbergh. In: Svenska män och kvinnor: biografisk uppslagsbok, vol. 7, p. 413. Stockholm: Bonnier, 1954. [In Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

.]