Rolf Zetterström

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Rolf Zetterström (1920–2011) was a Swedish pediatrician and a leader in child health and medical education. He earned his medical degree at Karolinska Institute in 1940, a Licentiate in 1944 and a doctorate in 1951. He became Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Gothenburg in 1958, and in 1962 he moved to the Karolinska Institute, where he worked until his retirement in 1986. He also led the Crown Princess Louise's Hospital for Children in Stockholm and later headed the children’s clinic at Saint Göran Hospital from 1970 to 1986, and he worked to improve children’s health in developing countries.

Zetterström played a key role in the Nobel Prize institutions. He was a member of the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute from 1962 to 1986 and sat on the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine from 1975 to 1983. He became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1975.

He was editor-in-chief of Acta Paediatrica from 1965 to 2005, helping the journal grow from a Scandinavian to an international publication. In 2000 he received the Solstickan Prize. He became Professor Emeritus in 1986.

In his private life, he was married twice and had four daughters. His first wife, Birgitta Zetterström-Karpe, was a physician and later a professor at Karolinska; they had three daughters. His second wife, Jelena Rennerová, had one daughter with him and had previously been briefly married to Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in a marriage of convenience to help her escape from Communist Czechoslovakia.