Nobel Prize Recipient. He received the 1982 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, jointly sharing equally with English biochemist, John Robert Vane, and Swedish colleague and former student, Bengt Samuelsson. Vane had researched separately on the relation between prostaglandins and aspirins. The three men were visiting Harvard University in Massachusetts for the anniversary of the medical school when they learned together that they were among the 1982 Nobel Prize recipients. According to the Nobel Prize committee, the three received the coveted award, "for their discoveries concerning prostaglandins and related biologically active substances" or simply, science that led to how aspirin works. Discovered by 1970 Nobel Prize recipient Ulf Von Euler, prostaglandins are hormone-like substances that control several important processes in the body. Bergström was the first to demonstrate the existence of more than one such compound and to determine the elemental compositions of two of them. Born one of three children, little has been published about his young years. He started college at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, had a fellowship at the University of London in 1938 before earning a British Council Fellowship to continue his work at Edinburgh, but with World War II starting, he had to return to Sweden. In 1940, he received a two-year Swedish-American Fellowship, studying at the University of Columbia in New York City and Squibb Institute for Medical Research in New Jersey. This gave him the opportunity to study under many scientists as well as many subjects. In 1944 he received from Karolinska Institute two degrees, M.D. and Doctorate of Medical Science Biochemistry. After having research fellowships at Columbia University in New York City and at the University of Basel, he returned to Sweden to accept a professorship of chemistry at the University of Lund. He returned to his alma mater, Karolinska Institute in Stockholm in 1958, becoming the dean of the medical faculty in 1963 and rector in 1969. He retired in 1981, yet continued to do research. Besides the Nobel Prize, he received a host of honors including the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize in 1975 from Columbia University with Bengt Samuelsson, elected to both the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences in 1965, elected as a Foreign Honorary Member to American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1966, the Canada Gairdner International Award in 1972, Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh in 1977, received the Welch Award in Chemistry from Texas and elected to the Medical Academy USSR, Moscow in 1982, and a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at Vatican City in 1985. He was married and had one son. In 2004, he learned that he had a 49-year-old-son, who was an award-winning evolutionary geneticist. He was the chairman of the Nobel Foundation from 1975 to 1987 and chairman of medical research at the World Health Organization from 1977 to 1982. He devoted himself to promoting maternal health in India, where he was primarily concerned with postpartum hemorrhage, a major cause of death during delivery.