Malmöhus County
He was born in Malmöhus County, now Skåne County, in southern Sweden and became a student at the nearby University of Lund in 1861. In 1864 he started to work for the observatory, and received his Ph.D. in 1868 working on methods to obtain the latitude of a place by astronomical observations. He was awarded the title of associate professor in Mechanics and Mathematical Physics in 1878, and elected Fellow of the Swedish Academy of Science in 1888. In 1897 he became a full professor.