Niels Ryberg Finsen

Niels Ryberg Finsen (1860 to 1904) was a physician and scientist born in Tórshavn in the Faroe Islands who trained in medicine at the University of Copenhagen, graduating in 1890. He developed phototherapy, the theory that certain wavelengths of light have beneficial medical effects, and used concentrated light radiation to treat lupus vulgaris. For that work he received the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and was the first Scandinavian to win it. In 1896 he became the first director of the Finsen Institute, which later merged into Copenhagen University Hospital. He was in poor health from the mid 1880s and kept working from a wheelchair until his death in Copenhagen in 1904.