Herbert Olivecrona

Axel Herbert Olivecrona (July 11, 1891 – January 1980) was a Swedish professor and brain surgeon, credited with founding the field of Swedish neurosurgery, and pioneering developments in modern neurosurgery.

Herbert Olivecrona was born July 11, 1891 in Visby, Sweden, the son of Axel Olivecrona, a district court judge, and Countess Ebba Cristina Mörner af Morlanda. His brother Karl Olivecrona was a noted Swedish legal scholar, and his son Gustaf Olivecrona a Swedish writer and journalist.

In his youth, he was playing elite bandy. He was part of the IFK Uppsala bandy team which in 1912 played a draw in the final against Djurgårdens IF and shared the Swedish championship that year.

Originally attending school in Uppsala, he began studying medicine at the University of Uppsala in 1909, then transferring to Karolinska Institutet, where he was an assistant in Pathology. He graduated in 1918.

In 1919, Olivecrona received a fellowship from the American-Scandinavian Foundation. This allowed him to engage in experimental work at the Johns Hopkins Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, where he worked with surgery pioneer Harvey Cushing (1869–1939). Olivecrona was offered a residency, and to be Cushing's foreign assistant on the condition that he work for a year at Pierre Marie's clinic in Paris. Due to financial reasons, Olivecrona declined and returned to Sweden, where, as the only neurosurgeon in the city interested in brain tumors, he established the first neurosurgery program at Serafimer Hospital in the 1920s. After further consultation with Cushing, Olivecrona improved his skills, and in 1930 was promoted to the position of assistant surgeon in chief, allowing him to establish a 50-bed neurosurgery department.

...
Wikipedia