Johannes Rydberg

He married Lydia Eleonara Mathilda Carlsson, daughter of a medical official, in 1886. The couple had three children.

He suffered from poor health during the last few years of his life. He was diagnosed with a weak heart and had blood circulation problems and was confined to the hospital for the last three years of his life. He died of a brain hemorrhage in 1919, aged 65.

He was born in Sweden to Sven and Maria Anderson Rydberg. His father, a merchant and minor ship owner, died when Janne was just four years old. Thus he had a difficult childhood as his mother brought him up amid financial problems.

He completed his schooling in 1873 and enrolled at the University of Lund from where he received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1875. His favorite subject had always been mathematics which he pursued after his bachelors. He earned a doctorate in mathematics in 1879.

He became an assistant lecturer or docent, in mathematics in 1880 at the Lund University. By now his interests were expanding to mathematical physics from just pure mathematics.

Following his increased interest in physics he changed his post to become an assistant lecturer in physics in 1882. He requested for a new physics building to house the Institute of Physics which was approved the same year.

He would perform his experiments in the new institute and formulate many of his findings there over the rest of his career. His love for experimental physics prevented him from accomplishing much as an academician.

He had always been interested in the periodic table of elements and it was this fascination which ultimately led to his studies in spectroscopy, the field in which he made his most significant contributions. He published his first scientific paper on the periodic table in 1884.

During the 1880s, he discovered that it was possible to separate the spectral lines belonging to an element in a number of different series and tried to find a formula for expressing it in a simple manner.

He is best known for propounding the Rydberg Formula which describes the wavelengths of spectral lines of many chemical elements and is used in atomic physics. The Rydberg constants and Rydberg atoms are related concepts.