Swedish soil scientist and chemist

Svante Odén is known because of his efforts in the 1960s to publicize the problem of acid rain and connect it with the deterioration of forests and fisheries. Acid rain was known to European scientists in the seventeenth century, named by Robert Angus Smith (1817–1884) in 1872, and accurately described by Eville Gorham (b. 1925) in the 1950s, but only became a popular environmental concern after the Swedish National Science Research Council published Odén's findings in 1968 as "The Acidification of Air and Precipitation and its Consequences in the Natural Environment" in Ecology Community Bulletin No. 1.

Odén was born on April 29, 1924 in Oscar's Parish, Stockholm, Sweden. After passing his upper secondary school examination in 1943, he earned a master of science degree in agriculture in 1954 and a licentiate in agriculture in...