After post-doctoral studies in Canada and USA, he obtained a research position at Uppsala and later at Lund University. In 1985, he joined the Department of Physical Chemistry at Chalmers. Sven Larsson's research area is electron transfer and conductivity. An important contribution is a model for electron transfer in a donor-acceptor system, which has been given widespread experimental confirmation and has applications in biological electron transfer. He also teaches applied quantum mechanics.
Teoretical concepts play a major role in chemistry.
The first important theory is certainly the theory of the 'atom', which originated in Greek philosophy and was reintroduced about two hundred years ago by Dalton and Berzelius to explain the law of definite proportions. The properties of atoms, as they engage in the formation of chemical compounds, decide their position in the periodic table. However, even at the end of the nineteenth century there was still hardly any clue as to the nature of the forces that hold atoms together. A deeper understanding had to await progress in physics. Knowledge of energy conditions and driving forces for chemical reactions and phase transitions is formalised in thermodynamics, a phenomenological science of great importance in chemical engineering and material science as well as in chemistry in general.