Anders Hallberg

Anders Hallberg (b. 29 April 1945 in Vetlanda) is a Swedish chemist and has been elected rector magnificus of Uppsala University from July 2006, succeeding Bo Sundqvist.

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Hallberg is born in Vetlanda, grew up in Tranås and studied at Lund University, where he received his M.Sc. degree in 1969 and his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1980. His dissertation, Methoxythiophenes and Related Systems (1980), was supervised by Prof. Salo Gronowitz.

Hallberg has worked at Lund University and at the pharmaceutical corporation Astra (later merged to become AstraZeneca) in Lund. He was appointed professor of Medicinal chemistry at Uppsala University in 1990, became Head of the Department of Organic Pharmaceutical Chemistry in 1991 and was Dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy 1996-2002.

He was elected a member of the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala 1994, of the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences in Uppsala in 2004, of the Royal Physiographic Society in Lund in 2005, of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 2006, and of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences in 2007.

Hallberg was directly involved in the case against the two professors of Mathematics as rector magnificus of Uppsala University, when he offered two professors 2,200,000 Swedish Kronor each to resign from their positions.

Controversy

After a long period of internal conflicts at the department of Mathematics, two professors at the department, the German mathematician Burglind Jöricke, and the Russian mathematician Oleg Viro, were asked to resign immediately by Hallberg and in exchange offered each 2 200 000 Swedish Kronor (roughly equivalent to 340 000 US dollars). The two professors accepted the offer on February 8, 2007.

The background story for this very unusal action was discussed in a recent article published in Uppsala Nya tidning on October 28th, 2007 (not available online). According to this article, the immediate reason for the action was that the two professors had been the driving force behind an harassment campaign against colleagues at the department. However, the University failed to present any proof or even detailed accusions, despite being repeatedly asked to do so.

The meetings and case, as seen by Viro and Jöricke, are documented on the web pages of the Professors and widely publicized in Swedish newspapers. They also made available audio records and transcripts of the February 8th meetings (Swedish law allows taping conversations without the knowledge of all participants in such cases). Those files tell a significantly different story from the official version.

The action by Hallberg and other members of the University Administration was named the largest Swedish academic scandal in 50 years by the Swedish mathematician Lennart Carleson of Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden in an article published by Sveriges Radio P4 Uppland on July 10, 2007. On July 5th, 2007, it became publicly known that Arthur Jaffe, a Professor in Mathematics at Harvard University and four other prominent U.S. mathematicians had signed a protest letter to the Swedish Government. This protest letter has not lead to any action by the Government.

References

• Anders Hallberg, CV
• Uppsala University Vice-Chancellor
• Letters published by The European Mathematical Information Service mirror at Cornell University
• The Home Page of Burglind Jörick, with an account of the case and the transcriptions of the meetings
• The Home Page of Oleg Viro
• Uppsala universitet ville bli av med dem snabbt
• Amerikanska professorer protesterar mot uppsägningar
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• Uppsala Nya Tidning