I was born in 1958 in Stockholm as the second of five siblings. After grade school and high school I came to the University of Rochester in upstate New York at the age of seventeen as a freshman in the academic year 1975-1976, with a one-year scholarship from the Sweden-America Foundation and the Institute of International Education. I had the luxury of being able to choose freely from all the courses at the university, as I was not going to take a degree at the U of R but merely stay there for one year. So I took courses in math, physics, and computer science, as well as philosophy, psychology and anthropology among other subjects. Besides having a great time both intellectually and socially, this year gave me an opportunity to consider whether I should start studying mathematics at the University of Stockholm or engineering physics at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm.

I chose the latter, primarily since it appeared more socially appealing in terms of campus activities. After several years of satisfying student life, interrupted by then mandatory Swedish military service and the odd exam, I found myself with a Master of Science degree (civilingenjör). However, I had no intention of using this degree to apply for a job at some company. My academic interests had been oscillating between mathematics and physics for the past few years, after being more oriented towards logic and computer science as I came back from the USA a few years earlier. In my last two undergraduate years, I opted for the ”applied mathematics” major, which included various required courses in optimization, probability theory and numerical analysis. At the same time, I selected most of my optional courses from physics: theory of relativity, advanced quantum mechanics, thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, and theoretical elementary particle physics.

In 1981, I was a Summer Student at CERN in Geneva, and after the summer I stayed on at CERN for a few more months to finish my Master of Science thesis work in experimental particle physics. This work was a part of the development of the Ring Imaging Cherenkov (RICH) detector for particle identification in the DELPHI experiment at the Large Electron-Positron collider (LEP) at CERN, which eventually would be used to take data from 1989 to 2000. Experimental particle physics experiments typically involve hundreds of physicists working for decades. Big science is fascinating – however I personally prefer to work in more small-scale projects.

Back at KTH, in the theoretical elementary particle physics course, I was drafted by my teacher, Sverker Fredriksson, to join the Department of Theoretical Physics as a PhD student. That was an easy sell. I then had some of my best years, as a graduate student with Sverker as advisor. My research in theoretical elementary particle physics was in the field of phenomenology of quark interactions, in particular diquarks, that is a system of two quarks.

After my PhD, I went to the Laboratoire de Physique Théorique in Bordeaux in France as a post-doc for one year. Without going into details, let it be said that this period of my life was more rewarding oenologically than academically.

I had done a fair amount of teaching since I came back from the USA, while studying at KTH, first as a substitute teacher of mathematics and physics in high school, then as a teaching assistant of mathematics and theoretical physics at KTH, and toward the end of my PhD studies as a lecturer of theoretical physics. I felt somewhat socially isolated in my professional work in Bordeaux, and I missed teaching and the direct student feedback. So, I wrote to the math department at KTH and asked if they needed an associate professor (lecturer) for one year. They did, and then they did too for another year, and then for one more year, and then… I enjoyed teaching at the math department, especially for the first years. I also had the opportunity to spend a (small) fraction of my time doing theoretical physics research together with Sverker during these years.

After a certain number of years (to be exact without being too explicit – the first non-trivial palindrome prime (in base 10)) at the KTH math department, I joined Ericsson and started working in the ICT (Information and Communications Technology) field. This, in 1999, meant a shift in the focus of my professional life from fundamentals to applications, and from government funding to market orientation.

I started out with mobile system base station software development, implementing standards, and soon went on to more general mobile system work. After a couple of years I joined the research division and started working with packet-switched networking (mostly IP) research. Until June 2012, I had a position as a Senior Researcher at the Packet Technologies unit within Ericsson Research. A major research topic of mine was the study of the characteristics of a network and its traffic conditions having access only to the edge of the network, and the development of a corresponding methodology for measurement of available capacity over network paths. This has been documented in a series of scientific publications in journals and conferences, as well as several patents and contributions to standardization.

I met my wife, Eva, in the mid-80s. We have two wonderful kids: our son Malte, born in 1990, and our daughter Svea, born in 1992. Currently (2019), Malte is working in our family business with product range development and the web, while Svea has a degree from  KTH and works with database application programming.

What was initially a hobby of mine, fermented beverages, over the years grew to become a field of professional activity. In the eighties, I was very much into wine appreciation – organizing tastings, giving courses, participating in competitions and co-founding what would become one of the most successful wine-tasting societies in Sweden (AuZone). Soon I discovered that beer had similar qualities and range of diversity, but was very much under-appreciated and suffered from a severe lack of attention, as compared to wine. This made beer all the more interesting to devote attention to.

I co-founded the Swedish Association of Home Brewers, as well as the Swedish National Championship of Home Brewing, in the late eighties. A few years later, in 1992, Eva and I started the company Humlegårdens Ekolager, to supply home brewers and emerging craft breweries with raw materials, although the market niche in Sweden was quite small at the time. Around the same time, I co-authored Ölbryggning, a book on small-scale brewing of beer. This book filled a void and remained the main book in Swedish in its field for a couple of decades.

Over the years, the business grew slowly but steadily from its humble beginnings, with Eva working full time to take care of day-to-day operations and myself working evenings and weekends with business development. From 2010 we started employing several people as it was no longer possible for Eva to handle the operations on her own. Eventually, the potential further growth of the business made me feel compelled to make a career change and move to working full time in our company. Starting from September 2011, when we had 5 employees, I went on a leave of absence for 9 months to work with Humlegårdens Ekolager. I finally burned my bridges, as I resigned from my position as senior researcher and left Ericsson in June 2012.

This meant another shift in my professional life. I have gone from fundamental science to applied research and then on to business.

Some purists might say that I have gone in the wrong direction over the course of my professional life – that fundamental science would somehow be ”more worthy” to devote your time to. As for myself, I still highly value philosophy, mathematics and fundamental science, but I don’t consider business and trade to be less ”worthy”. After all, it is what makes the world go around, and ultimately pays for fundamental science.

Our company has given employment to well over a dozen twenty thirty thirty-five people, and helped hundreds of breweries as well as tens of thousands of home brewers with equipment and ingredients to brew good beer.