The artistic and military careers are certainly not the only ones that have attracted the Finland-Swedes. Thus many of them have made noteworthy contributions to the advancement of Science. To try to identify all such persons would lead too far, but let us present a sample, anyway.

Anders Chydenius (1729-1803), a clergyman, worked for free trade, social reforms and freedom of the press. His book The National Gain (1765, Engl. 1931) has been compared with Adam Smith's famous work of 1776. The National Gain is in fact an express formulation of the fundamental ideas of economic liberalism eleven years before The Wealth of Nations.

Abraham Niklas Edelcrantz (1754-1821, né Clewberg), a scholar, physisist and civil servant, graduated in Turku where he was one of the founders of the (first) Aurora society and the newspaper "Åbo tidningar". He became a reader in History of Learning and Knowledge of Nature. He then moved to Stockholm where he was appointed Trustee of the King’s purse and Superintendent of the Royal Theatres. He also became a fellow of the Swedish Academy and was raised to the Nobility, later to Barony. He is known for his "Ode till svenska folket" (Ode to the Swedes) and for his construction of an optical telegraph. He also served as superintendent of the Royal Opera-House Orchestra and the National Board of Trade.

Petter Forsskål (1732-63), a philosopher and naturalist, a disciple of Linné, became Senior Lecturer of Economics at Uppsala in 1756. There he wrote a treatise on freedom of the press and the trade (1759), that was found to be offensive to those in authority. The booklet was confiscated and banned. Forsskål then sat out on a Danish research expedition to Arabia, during which he made scientific notes on about 300 animal and 800 plant species, notes considered to be epoch-making. He died of malaria while still in Arabia.

Johan Gadolin (1760-1852), Professor of Chemistry at Turku, made inquiries in the nature of latent and specific heat, in the nature of combustion and in what is now called titration analysis. He discovered the mineral that was later named gadolinite, and he is one of the five persons after whom elements have been named--the element gadolinium in his case.

Axel Gadolin (1828-92), a mineralogist, laid the foundation of modern crystallography and carried on research in ballistics. He became a fellow of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, was raised to the Nobility and promoted General.

Ragnar Granit (1900-90), a physiologist, was summoned to Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm in 1940. There he became Professor of Neurophysiology in 1946. He published inter alia Sensory Mechanisms of the Retina (1947), Receptors and Sensory Perception (1955) and Charles Scott Sherrington: an Appraisal. He shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1967.

Hugo Gyldén (1841-96) became Senior Astronomer at Pulkova Observatory near St. Petersburg at age 24, was summoned in 1871 by the Swedish Academy of Sciences to be Superintendent for Stockholm Observatory where he remained in spite of offerings of professorial chairs abroad. He became a fellow of the Academies of Sciences in Paris and St. Petersburg and of the Royal Astronomical Society in London.

Johan Haartman (1725-87), a physician, introduced inoculation against smallpox in Sweden in 1754. He wrote the first medical book in Swedish, describing the diagnosis and therapy of the most common diseases. In a Latin treatise he propounded a complete medical system.

Gustaf Gabriel af Hällström (1775-1844) became Professor of Physics at age 26, was the initiator of the observatories in Turku and Helsinki. He made a pioneering achievement in acoustics and initiated meteorological observations in Finland. He became a fellow of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, and of the Society of Science and Medicine in Heidelberg, and was raised to the Nobility in 1830.

Yrjö Hirn (1870-1952). A literary historian and scholar who specialised in aesthetics, wrote a very great number of works in the philosophy of art as well as biographies of Diderot, Swift, Dr. Johnson and James Boswell, Beaumarchais and several others. His principal work is The Origins of Art of 1900. Hirn is held to be one of the foremost Scandinavian humanists.

Erik Jorpes (1894-1973), a biochemist born on Åland, developed methods for the purification of insulin and for the preparation of a heparin pure enough to be used as a medicine, an important anti-coagulation drug as it turned out to be. Jorpes also published a biography, Jac. Berzelius: His Life and Work.

Pehr Kalm (1716-79), a naturalist and disciple of Linné was sent on a journey to North America 1747-51. His report from this journey, En resa till Norra Amerika (Travels into North America 1770) has been translated into German, English, French and Dutch, and is regarded a classic.

Rafael Karsten (1879-1956), an anthropologist and disciple of Westermarck, undertook several expeditions to South America and published inter alia The Origin of Worship and The Civilization of the South American Indians.

Håkan Kranck (1898-1989), a geologist, participated in expeditions to Mongolia and Patagonia. He held the Chair of Physical Geography at Neuchâtel 1945-48, and the Chair of Petrology at McGill University 1948-66.

Rolf Lagerborg (1874-1959), a philosopher, made an important contribution to the study of ethics and psychology. Because of his somewhat dissenting views he was considered awkward at the Helsinki University and had to go to Paris in 1903 in order to get his doctor’s thesis, La moral public, passed. (It was passed with distinction.) In 1929 he was appointed Professor of Philosophy at the Åbo Akademi, a private Swedish University in Turku. Among his many works are Das Gefühlsproblem (1905) and L’Ethical Relativity de Westermarck (1951) and The Essence of Morals (1953).

Erik Laxman (1737-96), a clergyman and geologist, made several scientific expeditions to various parts of Russia and Siberia. He was appointed to be Professor at the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg and Mineralogical Traveller of the Imperial Cabinet. He procured the right for Russian ships to call at the Port of Nagasaki.

Leonard Lindelöf Sr. (1827-1908), a mathematician and astronomer, participated in a British solar eclipse expedition to Spain, worked at the Pulkova Observatory, was appointed Professor of Mathematics at Helsinki University and Rector of the same. He published a number of mathematical works in French, became a fellow of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg and was raised to the Nobility.

Uno Lindelöf (1868-1944), a linguist, became Professor of English Philology at Helsinki University and published a number of works in the field of Old English dialects, e.g. Elements of the History of English Language (1911)

Baron Gustaf Mannerheim (1867-1951), the famous Field Marshal and President of Finland, also distinguished himself as an explorer. In 1906-08 he made a combined intelligence and ethnological expedition on horseback through southern Siberia, during which he collected a considerable number of ethnographic objects. Later he described the journey in a book titled Across Asia from West to East in 1906-1908 (1940). Mannerheim rose to the rank of Lieutenant General in the Imperial Army (and to Field Marshal in independent Finland).

Johan Jakob Nervander (1805-1848), a physician and poet, served as Professor of Physics from age 24. He constructed a hypersensitive galvanometer and initiated a magnetic observatory in Helsinki. He also supervised the designing of the Saima Canal and was awarded a prize by Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. In 1835 he was offered a professorial chair at Jena, which he relinquished, however.

Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld (1832-1901), a mineralogist and explorer, was dismissed from the Helsinki University in 1857 after having criticized Russia. Instead he went to Berlin where he resumed his studies and soon got a professorial chair in Stockholm in 1858. He conducted several expeditions to Spitsbergen and the Kara Sea in order to explore the possibility to circumnavigate Eurasia. After careful preliminaries he finally in 1878-79 accomplished this achievement, one of the most prominent feats in the history of Arctic exploration. On his return to Sweden he was much celebrated and also raised to the Barony. He published several scientific papers of lasting value.

Alexander von Nordmann (1803-1886), a naturalist, was Professor of Zoology and Botany in Odessa from what place he made a number of scientific expeditions to the Caucasus and the Crimea. He found fossils of mammals that proved to be of great paleontological interest and he also discovered a silver fir that was named Abies nordmanni after him. His foremost discovery is that of the parasitic crustaceans.

Gustaf Orraeus (1738-1811), a physician, went to Russia in his student days and--at age 20--became the first Doctor of Medicine in Russia. In 1770-71 he successfully combated plague epidemics among the Russian troops and later in Moscow, where he was appointed City Medical Officer. His report on the plague, Descriptio pestis, quae anno 1770 in Jassia et 1771 in Moscua grassata est, became a classic.

Hugo Pipping (1864-1944), a linguist, did pioneering research-work on phonetics, lectured on this subject in Helsinki and Gothenburg and was appointed Professor of Scandinavian Languages in Helsinki. He published works on the phonetics of Finnish and other languages, on the history of Gotland, on the Norse Edda, and on the enigmatic inscription on the rune stone at Rök in Sweden.

Edvard Rosenlund (1895-1939), a missionary, worked on Java, Sumatra and Celebes. On the latter island he studied certain tribes ethnologically and linguistically. For one of the tribal idioms, the ija, he created a written language on which he wrote a Biblical History (printed in Amsterdam in 1935).

Reinhold Ferdinand Sahlberg (1811-74), a naturalist, made two extensive scientific expeditions, the first including Brazil, Chile and Kodiak Island off Alaska. On his return journey he stayed one year at Lake Baykal. The rich zoological collections from his expeditions are divided between the Helsinki University and the State Museum of Natural History in Stockholm.

Gustaf Magnus Schwartz (1783-1858), a mining engineer, became Professor of Physics and Technology at the Swedish Academy of Sciences and Director General of the Stockholm Institute of Technology (that he had initiated). He is known as the inventor of an oven for burning charcoal from firewood, of flax processing machines, of a leaching apparatus, and of distillation columns. He became fellow of three Swedish Academies, i.e. those of Sciences, Military Science and Agriculture respectively.

Werner Söderhjelm (1859-1931), a literary historian, linguist and diplomat, held in succession the chairs of Romance Philology and the History of Literature at the Helsinki University. He published a number of biographies and works in linguistics and literary history, beginning with De Saint Laurent, Poème anglo-normand du XII siécle (1888). He was awarded the prize of the French Academy for his La nouvelle francaise of 1910. During the 1920's he served as Finland's Envoy to Stockholm.

Herman Didrich Spöring, Jr. (1733-71), a naturalist and a fellow of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, participated in James Cook's first voyage to the Pacific Ocean. An island in New Zeeland is named after him and even Canberra has its Sporing Street as a remembrance of his visit.

Karl Sundman (1873-1949), an astronomer, was first employed at Pulkovo. Later he became Head of the Helsinki Observatory and Professor of Astronomy. He worked out a near-solution of the theoretically unsolvable three-bodies-problem, presented in the French Acta Mathematica in 1912. He was awarded the distinguished de Pontécoulant's Prize twice and became a fellow of several learned societies in various countries.

Georg August Wallin (1811-52), an orientalist, undertook three prolonged expeditions to Egypt, Arabia, Palestine, Syria, Bagdad and Persia, in order to study ethnological and linguistic conditions. After his return to Europe he stayed some months in London where he became renowned for his achievements and was awarded the finest scientific distinction of the period, the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographic Society. He was also appointed Professor of Oriental Literature in Helsinki.

Edvard Westermarck (1862-1939), a sociologist and philosopher, wrote a number of pioneering treatises within his subject: The history of human marriage (1891), The origin and development of the moral ideas (1906-08), Ethical relativity (1932) and Christianity and morals (1939). He was Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics 1907-30. He was also the first Rector of the Åbo Akademi, the private Swedish University in Turku, founded in 1918. During his many expeditions to Morocco Westermarck collected a body of anthropological, ethnographical and ritual information, that became the basis of his Ritual and belief in Morocco (1926).