Arne Bjerhammar


Arne Bjerhammar was a Swedish geodesist. He was professor at Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. He was born in Båstad, Scania in the south of Sweden.
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.

Research

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 to
the problems of automatic plotting“ and for his refinement of the modulation system
of the Swedish EDM instrument Geodimeter he became one in the record of Swedish
inventors. However, many geodesists know him for the first
time for his new matrix algebra with generalized inverses, published in 1955
and 1957. Seven years later, fascinated by M.S.
Molodensky’s new approach to solve the basic problems of physical geodesy, he
presented his original idea of analytical downward continuation of the gravity
anomaly to an internal sphere. Among other areas of interest are his original proposals of recovering the
Earth’s gravity field by using the energy integral for satellites and by the
theory of general relativity using atomic clocks as well as his studies
on the correlation between the gravity field and the Fennoscandian land uplift
phenomenon in the 1970s. He is the author of about 200 scientific articles,
including two textbooks, many of the articles published as internal KTH reports. He
chaired the International Association of Geodesy study group on Statistical Methods in Geodesy.
His sabbatical leaves can be summarized as the stays as a Visiting Scientist at The
Research Institute for Geodetic Sciences in Alexandria, USA, in 1967 and 1968, at
Stuttgart University in 1982, National Geodetic Survey
in Washington, D.C., in 1984 and at Ohio State University in 1985 and 1986.

Recognition

His research was followed by national and international recognition, confirmed by
several prizes and rewards such as the German Gauss medal, The Great Prize of KTH, IAG’s Levallois medal and the Rossby Prize of the Swedish
Geophysical Society. He has also been awarded Nordstjärneorden by his
Majesty the King of Sweden. In 1988 he became an honorary doctor of the Technical University of Graz.