NEWS Christer Fuglesang, astronaut and honorary doctor at Umeå University has been awarded the Wargentin medal in gold of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences “for his devoted achievements as an astronaut, scientist and inspirer in the field of space.”
The prize will be formally presented at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards ceremony on 31 March 2010.
The Academy has a distinguished history for, among other things, choosing Nobel laureates in physics and chemistry. This commemorative coin, which became the Wargentin medal was minted in 1783 on the death of Pehr Wilhelm Wargentin, astronomer and permanent secretary of the Academy from 1743 - 1783.
Christer Fuglesang was named an honorary doctorate recipient at Umeå University’s Faculty of Science and Technology in 1999. He is an European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut and became the first Swede in space on a NASA Discovery spaceflight mission (STS-116) to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2006. He was on a second mission (STS-128) in 2009 and became the first spacewalker outside Russia and the United States to do more than three spacewalks.
Photo: Samuel Bengtson
Editor: David Meyers