Bengt edlen läkare

BornRingarum, Östergötland, Sweden, 2 November

DiedLund, Sweden, 10 February

Swedish spectroscopist Bengt Edlén solved a 70‐year‐old puzzle by identifying emission lines in the solar corona (discovered in by Thomas Young) with transitions in very highly ionized atoms, thereby demonstrating that the corona is much hotter than the visible surface of the Sun. He received his secondary education in Norrköping, Sweden, and entered the University of Uppsala in , earning a series of degrees ending with a doctorate in

By , optical spectroscopy had reached a shortest wavelength of Å, while X‐ray spectroscopy had reached a longest wavelength of 17 Å. Karl M. G. (“Manne”) Siegbahn of Uppsala, who had received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on X‐ray spectroscopy, suggested that Edlén should try to fill in the gap. This led to a doctoral thesis on the ultraviolet spectra of light elements from lithium to oxygen, with wavelength measurements and

(b. Gusum, Sweden, 2 November ;

d. Lund, Sweden, 10 February ), physics, especially ultraviolet and astronomical spectroscopy.

A physicist who devoted more than six decades to studying the spectra of high-temperature ions, Edlén achieved wide recognition in the early s when he identified the ions that give rise to the long-mysterious coronal-line spectrum. The apex of his research life, this interdisciplinary breakthrough launched him into a long career as honoree, institution builder, and arbiter of scientific promise and achievement.

The eldest of five children of Gustaf Fridolf Edlén and Maria Amalia née Rundberg, Edlén spent his early years in Gusum, a small industrial town in central Sweden where his father worked as an accountant. When eleven, he enrolled in nearby Norrköping’s upper school. During his nine years as a student there, he received particularly good marks in biology and physics. He later recalled that his instructor Harald Mohlin (whose doctoral advisor had been Knut Ångström of Uppsala University) had those in the physics class conduct laboratory studies of the Sun’s Fraunhofer spectrum. He also remembered participating in the school’s