Nobel Prize Recipient. He received world-wide recognition when he was awarded the 1911 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine for, according to the Nobel Prize committee, "his work on the dioptric of the eye." Dioptric is the branch of optics that deals with refraction of light. By using advanced mathematics, he calculated the pathway that light rays take through the eye; calculated the complicated creation of an image through the eye's lens, consisting of different layers that refract light to different degrees, and calculated the lens changes in shapes. He was a physician, ophthalmologist and a professor at the ophthalmological clinic in Stockholm. Beginning his medical career, he attended Uppsala University, but he left in 1885. He studied for a year at Vienna, continuing his medical studies at Stockholm where in 1888 he graduated in medicine; in 1890 presented his doctorate thesis, "Contribution to the Theory of Astigmatism;" and in 1891 was appointed Lecturer in Ophthalmology. After holding various appointments as doctor and lecturer along with serving on the Swedish Medical Board, he was appointed the first Professor of Ophthalmology at Uppsala University in 1894 staying until 1913. From 1914 he held the position Personal Professorship in Physical and Physiological Optics at Uppsala University, and was appointed Emeritus Professor in 1927 until his death in 1930. Although he expanded on the research done by a 19th century German physician, Dr. Hermann von Helmholtz, he was self-taught in the subject that he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Gullstrand's research was published as an appendix in Helmholtz's Treatise on Physiological Optics, which he edited in 1909. A month later and for the same research, Gullstrand was awarded a second Nobel Prize in Physics, which he declined, hence this award was given to Wilhelm Wien for his research in the radiation of heat. He had many award-winning publications but his three major publications were "General Theory of Monochromatic Aberrations and Their Immediate Significance for Ophthalmology" in 1900, "The True Optical Image" in 1906, and "The Optical Image in Heterogeneous Media and the Dioptrics of the Human Crystalline Lens" in 1908. Besides the Nobel Prize, he received awards from the Swedish Medical Association and the Swedish Royal Academy of Science for his 1900 publication and was awarded the Centenary Gold Medal of the Swedish Medical Association for the 1908 publication. He was a member of the Nobel Physics Committee of the Swedish Academy of Sciences from 1911 to 1929, and its Chairman from 1922 to 1929. In this position of chairman and with much discord among the Nobel Physics Committee, he voted to block Dr. Albert Einstein's Nobel Prize on the research on theories of relativity; Einstein's 1921 Nobel Prize was awarded in 1922 clearly "for service to theoretical physics." Gullstrand wrote what became to be known as the "long report," documenting his stand of not awarding Einstein's Nobel Prize for theories of relativity. In the report he said that he distrusted Einstein's higher mathematics, yet in the 21st century, Gullstrand's mathematics are not fully lucid to learned physicians. From the University of South Florida, Curtis E. Margo, MD, MPH, and Lynn E. Harman, MD published "Allvar Gullstrand, Albert Einstein, and a Nobel Dilemma Revisited" in 2012. Gullstrand received notoriety for his stand against Einstein's Nobel Prize being awarded. In 1927 Gullstrand was awarded the Graefe Medal of the Deutsche Ophthalmologische Gesellschaft. He married and the couple had one daughter, who died young. There is a bronze relief of his image on his grave marker.