Everything is now settled about the two funds being instigated in the memory of the SF fan, short-story writer, etc., Master of Sciences Arne Sjögren (1940-2012), who died in January last year. His surviving relatives receives a certain portion of his estate, but in his will he also allocated funds for two awards: for science fiction and for nanotechnology. The funds for these are ca 45.000 Euros each.
The SF oriented fund is administrated by Sweden’s oldest active SF club, Club Cosmos from Göteborg (established in 1954), and will award promotion of science fiction, activities that helps the club and/or short-story writing, to the sum of max ca 1.250 Euros/year. The exact allocations of awards within these three areas will – it seems – be decided year by year, by the board of Club Cosmos, which will also be the board of the separate Arne Sjögren Memorial Foundation being set up, worth ca 45.000 Euros. Sjögren was born in Gothenburg, though moving to Stockholm later, and active in the Cosmos Club. Details were published after Cosmos Club’s yearly business meeting on the 22nd of February.
The Arne Sjögren Memorial Foundation will be worth circa two thirds the value of the already existing Alvar Appeltofft Memorial Foundation, also named after a Big Name Fan, which since the late 1970’s has been handing out The Alvar fan activity award. (This foundation is situated in Stockholm. We now have fuel for the healthy rivalry between Sweden’s two biggest cities…)
Sjögren had a masters degree in the science of engineering (“civilingenjör” is the much shorter Swedish term) from the Chalmers University of Technology, based in Göteborg, also. And in his will, he remembers his old school by establishing a second fund, administrated by Chalmers. They will hand out an award, for nanotechnology – which is quite a bit science fiction too ! Chalmers will yearly award the best PhD thesis that relates to nanotech and will simply call it The Arne Sjögren Award. This fund also received ca 45.000 Euros in the will. It isn’t exactly the Nobel Foundation but it is *something* to remember Arne Sjögren by.
The Arne Sjögren Memorial Foundation, from the Cosmos Club:
http://clubcosmos.net/documents/ArneSj%C3%B6grensMinnesfond.pdf
An article from the Chalmers blog, mostly about Arne Sjögren himself (the undersigned for instance, who knew Arne, says a few words) but also about his studies at Chalmers and the nanotech award:
http://chalmeristbloggen.wordpress.com/2013/03/20/arne-testamenterade-370-000-till-chalmers/
P.S. : I was probably one of those who knew Arne Sjögren best during the last years of his life (and I first met him 35+ years ago). A very friendly guy though somewhat silent, reclusive and shy (but not anti-social at all; he went to club meetings, SF cons, even a few times to pub meetings). He used to call me to help him fix his computer, which was about scanning agains viruses and trojans – I did that several times. Even with an MSc he felt helpless in front of a computer. He was a sliderule man. (Short-story writer? Yes, in the 1960’s he has several short stories professionally published. He continued to write, and even took part in the writing list SKRIVA’s annual competion, where he once received an honourable mention among ca 120 entries.)
