Carl Lennart Philipson (July 16, 1929 – June 26, 2011) was a Swedish virologist and professor at

Karolinska Institute The Karolinska Institute (KI; sv, Karolinska Institutet; sometimes known as the (Royal) Caroline Institute in English) is a research-led Medical school, medical university in Solna Municipality, Solna within the Stockholm urban area of Sweden. ...

. He is well known for his research in respiratory viruses and his direction over several research institutions.

Career

Philipson earned his MD in 1957 and PhD in 1958 at

Uppsala University Uppsala University ( sv, Uppsala universitet) is a public research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded in 1477, it is the oldest university in Sweden and the Nordic countries still in operation. The university rose to significance during ...

, working with

Arne Tiselius Arne Wilhelm Kaurin Tiselius (10 August 1902 – 29 October 1971) was a Swedish biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1948 "for his research on electrophoresis and adsorption analysis, especially for his discoveries concerning ...

. He came to the United States in 1959 to do a postdoc at the Rockefeller University in virology, before returning to Sweden's

to establish his own laboratory in 1961 with Jan Pontén. He did two sabbaticals in the United States. In 1971 in the laboratory of Jim Darnell, and in 1977 in the laboratory of

David Baltimore David Baltimore (born March 7, 1938) is an American biologist, university administrator, and 1975 Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine. He is President Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technol ...

. In 1967, he was appointed director of the Wallenberg Laboratory in Sweden. In 1982, he was appointed to be the second director general of the

European Molecular Biology Laboratory The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is an intergovernmental organization dedicated to molecular biology research and is supported by 27 member states, two prospect states, and one associate member state. EMBL was created in 1974 and ...

(EMBL), which he ran until 1993. He resigned after being unable to convince the council to increase the funding by 15-20% each year. At that point, he returned to the US to be the founding director of the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine at the

New York University School of Medicine NYU Grossman School of Medicine is a medical school of New York University, a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1841 and is one of two medical schools of the university, with the other being the Long Island School of ...

. After five years, he returned to Sweden to join the

, where he remained until his death in 2011. He was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 1992. In 2015, EMBL established the Lennart Philipson Award for translational research. He and his wife founded the Malin and Lennart Philipson Foundation. It is now run by his widow, and awards prizes to promising graduate students and postdocs.

Notes and references

{{DEFAULTSORT:Philipson, Lennart 1929 births 2011 deaths Swedish virologists Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 20th-century Swedish people