Einar Hammarsten

Einar Hammarsten (4 January 188916 February 1968) was a Swedish physician and professor of pharmacy and chemistry at the Karolinska Institute from 1928 to 1957. His area of research was the chemistry of the cell nucleus, in particular nucleic acids.

Career Hammarsten was the first to discover that RNA, at that time called the tetranucleotide of yeast nucleic acid, is present in animal organs, or more specifically in the pancreas. Before Hammarsten's discovery, only guanylic acid had been found there. His doctoral dissertation in 1924 was concerned with purification of DNA, at the time called thymonucleic acid, its ionization and osmotic pressure.

In 1918, Hammarsten married Greta Norrbin, a clinical chemist and medical doctor at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

As the uncle of the future author and illustrator Tove Jansson, he is credited with inventing the name "Moomintroll", telling his niece that one of these little monsters lived in the pantry, in an attempt to stop her from pilfering food.