Sune Svanberg was born in 1943 in Trollhättan, Sweden, Swedish Citizen. He received his PhD in the field of atomic resonance spectroscopy in 1972 at Gothenburg University, Sweden. After a post-doc year at Columbia University, New York and initial work on atomic laser spectroscopy, he continued laser-based spectroscopy at Chalmers in Gothenburg up till 1980, when he became professor and head of the Atomic Physics Division at Lund Institute of Technology (technical faculty at Lund University) up till 2008. In 1995 he was appointed as director of the newly established Lund Laser Center. He remained its director until 2010, and continued as Senior Professor at the center. Since 2011 he has been a Distinguished Professor at the South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China. He is a member of 6 scientific academies: Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (and during 10 years a member of its Nobel Committee for Physics; two years as chairman), Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, Royal Society of Sciences, Académie Royal de Belgique, Lithuanian Academy of Science, and the Third World Academy of Sciences. He is Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), Optical Society (OSA), European Optical Society, SPIE and the Electromagnetic Academy. He became honorary doctor/professor at 8 universities, including Jilin University, Harbin Institute of Technology and Zhejiang University. He was the recipient of the first European Physical Society Quantum Electronics Prize (1996) and recipient of the first Azko Nobel Science Award (1999). In 2004 he was awarded the SKAPA Innovation Prize, in 2005 the W.E. Lamb Medal, in 2006 the Celsius Gold Medal (Uppsala), in 2009 the Memorial Gold Medal (Lund) and the V.K. Zworykin Award of the International Federation of Medical and Biological Engineering, in 2010 the Adelskold Medal of the Royal Academy of Sciences and the Large Gold Medal from the Royal Academy of Engineering Sciences, Stockholm, and in 2012 the Gold Medal of His Majesty the King of Sweden. He is an "Einstein Professor" of the Chinese Academy of Sciences since 2006, and received China´s highest distinction for non-Chinese, the China Friendship Award in 2013, and became Honorary Citizen of Guangzhou in 2015.
He serves on numerous international conference-, evaluation- and advisory committees. He has supervised a large number of graduate students to their PhD in Physics. Being the co-author of more than 650 scientific papers and around 40 patents and patent applications, he had scientific collaboration with major international companies and helped in the formation of several spin-off companies. He worked extensively with physicists in developing countries, and helped arrange hands-on workshops where realistic equipment related to medicine, environment and agriculture was introduced.
