| Arne Evert Bjerhammar | |
| Birth Date: | 15 September 1917 |
| Birth Place: | Båstad |
| Field: | Geodesy, Mathematics |
| Alma Mater: | Royal Institute of Technology |
| Awards: | Gauss medal (1969), The Great Prize of KTH (1982), IAG's Levallois medal (1987), Rossby Prize of the Swedish Geophysical Society (1988), Nordstjärneorden |
Arne Bjerhammar (September 15, 1917 – February 6, 2011) was a Swedish geodesist. He was professor at Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm. He was born in Båstad, Scania in the south of Sweden.[1] [2]
He developed a method used to determine the geoid in gravimetric data, as well as a system for electro-optical measuring of distances. He also did research about the Fennoscandian post-glacial rebound.
His research covered many fields of geodesy. As a result of his doctor’s dissertation“A contribution to the methods of optical distance measuring, specially with regard tothe problems of automatic plotting“ and for his refinement of the modulation systemof the Swedish EDM instrument Geodimeter he became one in the record of Swedishinventors. However, many geodesists (and mathematicians) know him for the firsttime for his new matrix algebra with generalized inverses, published in 1955(in Swedish) and 1957 (in English). Seven years later, fascinated by M.S.Molodensky’s new approach to solve the basic problems of physical geodesy, hepresented his original idea of analytical downward continuation of the gravityanomaly to an internal sphere (“the Bjerhammar sphere”). Among other areas of interest are his original proposals of recovering theEarth’s gravity field by using the energy integral for satellites (1967) and by thetheory of general relativity using atomic clocks (1975 and 1985) as well as his studieson the correlation between the gravity field and the Fennoscandian land upliftphenomenon (post-glacial rebound) in the 1970s. He is the author of about 200 scientific articles,including two textbooks, many of the articles published as internal KTH reports. Hechaired the International Association of Geodesy study group on Statistical Methods in Geodesy (1963–1967).
His sabbatical leaves can be summarized as the stays as a visiting scientist at TheResearch Institute for Geodetic Sciences in Alexandria, US, in 1967 and 1968, atStuttgart University (as an A-v-Humbold scholar) in 1982, National Geodetic Surveyin Washington, D.C., in 1984 and at Ohio State University in 1985 and 1986.
His research was followed by national and international recognition, confirmed byseveral prizes and rewards such as the German Gauss medal (1969), The Great Prize of KTH (1982), IAG’s Levallois medal (1987) and the Rossby Prize of the SwedishGeophysical Society (1988). He has also been awarded Nordstjärneorden by hisMajesty the King of Sweden. In 1988 he became an honorary doctor of the Technical University of Graz.