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Professor Sven Andersson in Memoriam – the Swedish Father of Acupuncture

Sven Andersson, professor in Physiology at Göthenburg University, has died at the age of 79 after a long illness. Professor Andersson was born in 1927 in Gesäter in Dalsland, in the western parts of Sweden. He started his medical studies in Göthenburg, where he remained throughout most of his career. Professor Andersson began his scientific career in the neurophysiology section of the Physiology department at Göthenburg University. His initial research was focused on the motor system, and during 1959-60 he was based at Vernon Mountcastle’s laboratory in Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA. In Mountcastle’s laboratory he learned to register the activity in individual nerve cells in the somatosensory cortex. He used this technology later for his doctoral dissertation on the role of spinal reflexes in somatosensory processing. Professor Andersson was awarded his doctorate in 1962 and became senior lecturer in Physiology at Göthenburg University in 1963. In 1969 he was appointed associate professor in Physiology, and 1979 he was awarded the chair. He was acting Head of the Physiology Department at Göthenburg University from 1979 to his retirement in 1992. For many years he was active in training medical personnel in acupuncture and received several awards, including the Life Academic Award for Chinese Medicine in 1996, for his great contribution to enhancing scientific research in the field of acupuncture. Professor Andersson was perhaps most wellknown for his important initiatives in pain research and his focus on the sensory nervous system’s influence on the regulation of pain and autonomic tone. Early in his career he became convinced that acupuncture is an effective method of pain control based on the activation of the body’s own systems, and this area dominated his interests from the early 1970s. Over the years that followed, his reputation grew and he became distinguished for his research into the fundamental mechanisms of acupuncture and its pain alleviating effect. His commitment to pain research also led to his involvement in assignments in international commissions and committees and for many years he was a member of the board of the International Association for the Study of Pain, the most important meeting point for the world’s pain researchers and clinicians interested in pain. For several years he also served as vice president to its Scandinavian equivalent, the Scandinavian Association for the Study of Pain. As a teacher and research tutor, Professor Andersson was highly regarded, and supervised a large number of doctoral students through their dissertations. He established the Foundation for Acupuncture and Alternative Biological Treatment Methods, a not-for-profit charity that for many years served as the sole Foundation for grants in acupuncture in Sweden. He made significant contributions to the Foundation and thereby to