page_title: Karolinska Institute
section_title: 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: Karolinska Institute / History / 19th century
caption_attribution_description: English: Royal Caroline Institute Karolinska Institutet buildings in 1906 Place: Kungsholmen, Stockholm, Sweden
context_page_description: The Karolinska Institute is a research-led medical university in Solna within the Stockholm urban area of Sweden. It covers areas such as biochemistry, genetics, pharmacology, pathology, anatomy, physiology and medical microbiology, among others. It is recognised as Sweden's best university and one of the largest, most prestigious medical universities in the world. It is the highest ranked in all Scandinavia. The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The assembly consists of fifty professors from various medical disciplines at the university. The current rector of Karolinska Institute is Ole Petter Ottersen, who took office in August 2017.
  The Karolinska Institute was founded in 1810 on the island of Kungsholmen on the west side of Stockholm; the main campus was relocated decades later to Solna, just outside Stockholm. A second campus was established more recently in Flemingsberg, Huddinge, south of Stockholm. The Karolinska Institute is consistently ranked among the top medical universities internationally in a number of ranking tables.
context_section_description: The Karolinska Institute was founded by King Karl XIII on 13 December 1810 as an "academy for the training of skilled army surgeons" after one in three soldiers wounded in the Finnish War against Russia died in field hospitals. Indeed, a report of the time came to the conclusion that "the medical skills of the army barber-surgeons are manifestly inadequate, so Sweden needs to train surgeons in order to better prepare the country for future wars." Just one year later, in 1811, the Karolinska Institute was granted license to train not only surgeons but medical practitioners in general.
  As one of KI's first professors, Jöns Jacob Berzelius laid the foundations of the newly inaugurated institute's scientific orientation, which in 1816 is granted the name Carolinska Institutet (in reference to the Caroleans). This name, however, didn't really make an impact at the time and so was expanded to Carolinska Medico Chirurgiska institutet, which proved more popular, especially when preceded by the epithet Kongliga (Royal), as introduced in 1822. This original institute was situated in the Royal Bakery on Riddarholmen (a small but central island in Stockholm) and within a just a couple of years had grown to encompass four professorships in anatomy, natural history and pharmacy, theoretical medicine and practical medicine (internal medicine and surgery).
  At around the same time Anders Johan Hagströmer, a professor of anatomy and surgery from the Collegium Medicum (the National Board of Health and Welfare of its day), was appointed the institute's first inspector, a post equivalent to today's president. In the same year, the institute moved to the old Glasbruk quarter on Norr Mälarstrand, beside what is now the City Hall. The move across the waters of Riddarfjärden was accomplished with the help of barges, one of which is said to have capsized, consigning parts of Hagströmer's collection of preparations to the lake bed. Despite this his library survives intact and today forms part of the KI-Swedish Society of Medicine museum at the institute's Hagströmer Library.
  In 1861 the institute reached a significant milestone in being awarded the right to confer its own degrees; as such it was granted a status equal to that of a university. This, in turn, led to an increase in the size of the student body, necessitating the demolition of the old building on the Glasbruk plot and its replacement with a new, larger one. This new institute building was built in stages, mostly during the 1880s and into the first decade of the 20th century; it stands to this day, and has remained largely unchanged since its opening.
  Although it had already gained the right to confer general degrees, KI wasn't licensed to confer medical degrees until 1874. Previously, even though the institute could run courses in medicine, the right to confer medical degrees was almost exclusively that of Uppsala University. Following on from this change in the institute's status the first doctoral thesis was defended at KI by Alfred Levertin, on the subject of "Om Torpa Källa". Just shortly thereafter the Medical Students' Union was formed.
  The next decade was one of firsts. By 1880 the Karolinska Institute had started to accept women and so it was in 1884 that Karolina Widerström became the first woman to obtain a bachelor's degree in medicine from the institute; she later went on to obtain a Licentiate degree in medicine and chose to specialise in women's medicine and gynaecology. Anna Stecksén later became the first woman to obtain a doctorate from the university.
  Just five years later, following the death of Alfred Nobel in 1895, the Karolinska Institute received the right to select the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Since then, this assignment has given the Karolinska Institute a broad contact network in the field of medical science. Indeed, over the years, five of the institute's own researchers have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
caption: The Karolinska Institute's main building in 1906
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