Astrid Cleve - Life

Life

Astrid Cleve was born into academic life on 22 January 1875, in Uppsala, Sweden. She was the eldest daughter of the chemist, oceanographer, geologist and professor Per Teodor Cleve and Caralma (Alma) Öhbom. With her two younger sisters, Cleve received her early education at home from her mother, one of the earliest women to complete gymnasium studies in the country and a prominent women's right's and education advocate. She was formally educated at a Lausanne boarding school from the age of eleven to the age of thirteen, after which she completed her secondary education at home. Her father taught her the basics of science in his laboratory, where he studied plankton; this formative experience sparked Cleve's interest in diatoms. She obtained her baccalaureate at sixteen. She matriculated at Uppsala University in the fall of 1891 to study natural science; she graduated with a bachelor's degree in January 1894. She then was hired as an assistant chemistry professor at the progressive Stockholm University. While working there she met the German- Swedish biochemist and later Nobel laureate Hans von Euler-Chelpin. They married in 1902 and she took the name Astrid Cleve von Euler. They raised five children, three of whom were born shortly after she left the University, one of them being the later physiologist and Nobel laureate Ulf von Euler. The marriage ended in 1912; seventeen years later, in 1929, Hans von Euler-Chelpin won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his studies of fermentation. Toward the end of her marriage, in 1911, she became a teacher in Stockholm's Anna Sandströms women teacher's seminary until 1917. Concurrently, she taught at two other schools: the Norrmalm Högre Realläroverket (secondary modern school) from 1912 to 1914 and the girls' Nya Elementarskolan (New High School) from 1912-1916. Cleve also conducted research in this period. After her teaching job ended, she moved to Värmland, where she lived from 1917-1923 and was head of the Skoghallsverkens Forskningslaboratorium (forestry laboratory), a subsidiary of the Uddeholm Company; she continued to conduct research there. After her stint there, Cleve and her family moved to Uppsala for three years; in 1933 they moved to a farm in Lindesberg where they raised sheep. In addition to farming, Cleve supported her family by teaching at the town's realskola. In 1949, the family returned to Uppsala, where she spent the majority of her remaining years; that year, she became a Catholic. In 1968, 93 years old, she had a hernia operation that she never fully recovered from. Astrid Cleve von Euler died on 8 April 1968 in a Västeräs nursing home. Throughout her life, she had many private interests, including French literature and philosophy.