The Royal Physiographic Society in Lund and the Gunnar Källén Lectures

Abstract

The Royal Physiographic Society in Lund is a learned society founded already in 1772, to promote “Physiography”. However, that does not mean that the Society’s main concern is physical geography. In fact it is an academy for natural sciences, medicine and technique – its task being promotion of knowledge in these areas. An account of the history of this Society is given in [1].

In spite of having been created to deal with “local affairs” related to the province of Scania, the Royal Physiographic Society early on realized the importance of international contacts and has had a large number of foreign members. Among the distinguished physicists present in this book who were foreign members of this Society we find: Niels Bohr, Paul Dirac, Christian Møller and Wolfgang Pauli. Pauli was delighted to become a member and so was also the Society – they could ask him for services which he happily delivered. After all his dear friend Niels Bohr was in Copenhagen, just across a few kilometers wide channel between Denmark and Sweden.