Hans Pettersson, 1888-1966

• Published in: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: The Royal Society 1966
• Subjects: Arctic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbm.1966.0019; https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsbm.1966.0019

Professor Pettersson described his ancestral home as an old wooden house far out on the storm-swept coast of the Skagerrak, lying so close to the water that the master of a ship wrecked immediately in front of it during the Napoleonic wars carried his wife and child to safety along the bowsprit which had run through the kitchen window. Its rooms, furnished from wrecks of bygone ages, are swept by the beam of the Paternoster lighthouse. With such memories it is not surprising that he, like his father, should be impelled by uncommon imaginative faculties and turn to the study of the sea. His father, Professor Otto Pettersson, was very active up to the time of his death in January 1941, within a month of his 93rd birthday. Till 1909 he was Professor of Chemistry at the Stockholm Hogskola, where the methods and instruments were developed for Swedish exploration of the sea and men trained to use them. By 1883 he was contributing to the scientific reports of the Vega Expedition to Arctic waters and actively engaged with G. Ekman and others in the study of the Kattegatt and Skagerrak. He was active in furthering international cooperation and by 1893 the Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and British Governments had joined in the hydrographic exploration of the North Sea and the Baltic, the British contribution being made by the Fishery Board for Scotland; he is particularly remembered for his part in the foundation of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea.