Johan Lundin (1928-2001)

Dr. Johan Lundin, a distinguished Swedish chemist specializing in defense against biological and chemical warfare and in related arms control issues, died on 8 August 2001 of cancer at the age of 73.

Lundin received his Ph.D. from the University of Uppsala and served most of his life in the Swedish Defence Research Institute in Stockholm. In the 1960s, he conducted pioneering work to develop an enzyme-based method to detect the presence of nerve gases. The enzyme was extracted from plaice, the salt water fish. This cellbound enzyme could be liberated by a bacteria and could then be purified and characterized. The method is still in use by, among others, Swedish civil and military defence. Since 1969, he also served as an advisor to the Swedish delegation in the Geneva Disarmament Conference and played an important role in the preparatory work to elaborate the treaties on prohibiting biological weapons in 1972 and chemical weapons in 1993.

At the end of his career, Johan was for some time the expert advisor to Sweden's Supreme Commander and also spent five years doing research in arms control at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). He served as a coordinator for SIPRI's chemical and biological activities and also contributed to its well known Yearbook of World Armament and Disarmament.

Johan was very active in the Pugwash and attended some 40 meetings beginning with the 23rd Pugwash Conference in Aulanko, Finland, in 1973. He participated in the series of Pugwash workshops on chemical weapons, from the first meeting in Helsinki in 1974 through all subsequent meetings into the 1990s, including the 1979 workshop in Stockholm which he organized. He served as the executive secretary of the Swedish Pugwash Group for more than a decade and was the group's treasurer until the late 1990s.

Johan had the true Pugwash spirit in seeking solutions to global security problems in the area of weapons of mass destruction and will be remembered with great affection.