Jubilee book depicts 50 years of LTH

Read about how a royal appointment to professor in a brown envelope nearly ended up in the bin with the junk mail in "50 år med LTH, en fingervisning om teknik" (Fifty years of LTH, a pointer on engineering). This is the title of the book which has been brought out in connection with the fiftieth anniversary of LTH - the Faculty of Engineering at Lund University.

The reader is taken on a journey through LTH’s history and development, from a fairly modest start in the early 1960s to today’s top-ranked faculty of engineering with 9 000 students.

LUM met one of the editors of the book, journalist Mats Nygren, who explained that in 1961 there was just one class with 30 students.

“It didn’t have its own premises, so many lectures had to be held in a cinema in central Lund.”
However, the operations grew and in 1965 the official inauguration was held. In the same year, the first 28 professors were appointed at LTH. The book includes s with eight of the original professors.

“Karl-Johan Åström is one of them. He was appointed Professor of Automatic Control. When you meet him today, it’s hard to believe so many years have passed. He still works as a senior professor at LTH and is full of ideas”, says Mats Nygren.

Herman Grimmeiss, Professor of Solid State Physics, was also involved from the start. He came to LTH from Germany.

“But he almost missed his appointment to professor in Lund entirely. The letter from the King of Sweden came in a brown envelope and was almost thrown away, as the professor thought it was junk mail.”

On the cover of the book are the first group of engineering students to graduate from LTH in 1965. In the middle is Inger-Lena Lamm, who was the first female student at LTH.

“She often got to act as cover girl”, says Mats Nygren. “It was an almost entirely male-dominated environment at that time, but this has gradually changed over the years.”

Many ideas for the jubilee book came from co-editor Skotte Mårtensson, who has been at LTH since 1963. A number of LTH’s current and former researchers and lecturers have also contributed to the book, as well as a number of presidents of the students’ union (Teknologkåren) over the years.
The Teknologkåren magazine ORDO, the university magazine LUM and LTH’s own magazine LTH-Nytt have been other important sources for Mats Nygren in his work on the book.

“The magazines provide a sense of the tone and political climate at LTH in different periods. ORDO, for example, was quite Marxist in the late sixties”, he says.

FOOTNOTE: The LTH jubilee book 50 år med LTH, en fingervisning om teknik can be purchased at Lund Tourist Information Centre and at Lunds Bok och Papper opposite the railway station. The book can also be purchased online at www.lth.se and at the Studiecentrum information desk at LTH.

- Johan Lindskoug 

Photo caption: Mats Nygren and Skotte Mårtensson on the front row together with the other authors of the jubilee book.

The LTH jubilee book is 350 pages long and covers most of the events of LTH’s 50-year history.