Ragnar Granit

Early life and education Ragnar Arthur Granit was born on 30 October 1900 in Riihimäki, Finland, at the time part of the Russian Empire, into a Swedish-speaking Finnish family whose roots in Korpo in the Åboland archipelago went back generations. His parents were the forester Arthur Granit and Albertina Helena (Bertie) Malmberg. Granit was raised in Oulunkylä, a suburb of the Finnish capital of Helsinki, and attended the Svenska normallyceum in Helsinki. He spent his childhood and youth summers in Korpo, where he sailed and fished with his cousins Lars-Ivar Ringbom, later an art historian, Anders Ringbom, later a professor of analytical chemistry, and Nils-Erik Ringbom, later a composer and intendent of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra.

Motor control research From the mid-1940s, Granit shifted his focus to the neurophysiology of motor control. He investigated muscle function and the synapses that control muscle contraction, opening an entirely new field of research that has since been pursued around the world. and was elected Swedish member number 912 of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1944.

Granit was elected an International Member of the American Philosophical Society in 1954. In 1960, Granit was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS).

Granit was elected an International Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1968. In 1971, he was elected an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Personal life Granit married Baroness Marguerite Emma (Daisy) Bruun (1902–1991) in 1929.