Holger Crafoord

Alf Erik Holger Crafoord (né Lundquist; 25 July 1908 – 21 May 1982) was a Swedish industrialist and patron. He founded Gambro, which developed and commercialised the artificial kidney. He also established the , the proceeds of which fund the Crafoord Prize for scientific research.

Biography Holger Crafoord was born in Stockholm, the son of Alfred Lundquist (1882–1927), an army officer, and Hanna Lundquist née Johansson (1883–1965). The marriage is said to have been short-lived, and Hanna Lundquist supported herself and her son in meager circumstances as the proprietor of a grocery store. She later remarried ship engineer Harry Crafoord (1881–1935), who adopted his stepson. Crafoord attended Palmgrenska samskolan and Östra Real in Stockholm growing up.

After graduating from the Stockholm School of Economics in 1930, Crafoord started working at Ruben Rausing's the same year. In 1935, Crafoord married Anna-Greta Crafoord née Löfdal (1914–1994) and they had three daughters: Birgitta, Katarina, and Margareta.

Gambro Professor Nils Alwall had been working since the 1940s on an artificial kidney and dialysis treatments to filter the blood of kidney patients. The filters of the time required a long cleaning process to render them suitable for reuse. In 1961, after being unable to help two patients due to these limitations, Alwall happened to meet Crafoord at a dinner. What Alwall needed was someone to produce disposable filters; Crafoord had experience in the manufacturing and plastics industry and was very interested in financing the product, which could save lives. In 1964, Crafoord founded the company Gambro – originally AB – which developed and three years later commercialized the invention.

In 1981, Gambro "diversified into the heart-lung product area and built up a special network of suppliers", developing other technologies for treating blood outside the body (extracorporeally), for example in connection with heart surgery, and blood component technology, which separates blood into different components and then uses some of them in the care of cancer patients.

Crafoord Foundation and Prize

Crafoord laid the foundations for the in 1980 and the Crafoord Prize which has been awarded since 1982 and was intended to supplement fields awarded the Nobel Prize, with awards for arthritis research as well. He was the founder of the Holger Crafoord Economics Center in Lund, which later became the Lund University School of Economics and Management.

Awards

Honours Member of the Society of Sciences in Lund (1951) Member of the Royal Physiographic Society in Lund (1960) Royal Society of the Humanities at Lund (1964) Honorary Doctor of Economics, Lund University (1972) Honorary Doctor of Medicine, Lund University(1976)