The image: Double PhD graduation ceremonies in May

Jonas Jonsson and his daughter Karin Rubenson.

Double PhD graduation ceremonies

■ On 18 and 25 May, it was fi nally time for doctoral degree conferments in the Grand Auditorium, after a long break due to the pandemic. The winter’s postponed ceremony took place on 18 May and the spring ceremony on 25 May.

A total of 252 doctoral students received their PhDs at the two ceremonies.

“It was a wonderful feeling. I defended my dissertation in the middle of the COVID pandemic when many people my age still weren’t vaccinated. Now it’s fi nally possible to celebrate properly,” said Julia Aulin, who defended her doctoral thesis in medicine one year ago.

She was among the 120 doctoral students of various ages who were awarded their PhDs on 25 May. On the same occasion, 84 jubilee doctors were also celebrated, 46 of whom were present. Jubilee doctor Jonas Jonson, clad in his doctor’s hat and robes, attended with his daughter Karin Rubenson, who graduated the same day.

“It feels fun and festive to do this, especially along with my daughter,” he remarked.

Father and daughter are both doctors of the Faculty of Theology, albeit in different subject areas, and it happened to be exactly 50 years between their graduations. “I defended my thesis a year ago and was actually scheduled to graduate in January, so it was thanks to the pandemic that we got to celebrate this together,” said Karin Rubenson.

/ ANNICA HULTH

The Celsius thermometer began to be used in observations in Uppsala in 1743.

300 years of weather observations

■ In Uppsala we have one of the world’s oldest continuous series of weather observations. They were started by Uppsala scientists Anders Celsius and Erik Burman as long ago as 1722, so this year Uppsala is celebrating 300 years of meteorological data about our planet. This long series of observations is very important for present-day climate research.

Anders Celsius (1701–1744) was a pioneer in the use of systematic observations of phenomena such as temperature, sea level and the aurora borealis to study the Earth and its changes. He is best known for the Celsius temperature scale (°C), which is now the international unit for temperature. The Celsius thermometer began to be used in observations in Uppsala in 1743. At that time, the scale was the reverse of the present-day scale: the boiling point was set at 0 degrees and the freezing point at 100 degrees.