Other students of the Swedish-language Svenska klassiska lyceum came mostly from wealthy upper-class families, Jorpes was bullied of his social status and dialect.
He joined the local Social Democratic student organization and wrote marxist articles to the newspaper Arbetet.
Jorpes did not support the idea of an armed revolution, but joined the Red Guards medical staff as he saw it was his duty to help the wounded.
They were soon transported to Soviet Russia, and finally Jorpes ended up working as a doctor in the Buy refugee camp, set for the Finnish Reds in the Kostroma Governorate.
[1] As the Buy camp was disbanded in early 1919, Jorpes was offered a job in Saint Petersburg but he wanted to leave Russia and emigrate Sweden as a political refugee because the former Reds were prisoned in Finland.
He had no money, but managed to find a place to live and with the help of the prominent Social Democrat politician Hjalmar Branting, Jorpes was able to continue his medical studies in the Karolinska Institute.
In 1949–1951, Jorpes and his predecessor, the professor Einar Hammarsten had a major influence on the architectural design of the building of chemistry of the Karolinska Institute Campus in Solna.
The drawings were originally made in 1937 by the architect Tore Rydberg but the construction was postponed due to the World War II.
Jorpes completed his German dissertation Über Pentosennucleinsäuren im Tierorganismus unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Pancreasnucleinsäuren in 1928.
He also visited the University of Toronto, where Jorpes studied the preparation of insulin in the Connaught Laboratories under the guidance of the Nobel-winning biochemists Frederick Banting and John Macleod.
After returning Sweden, Jorpes launched the production of insulin in the laboratory of the pharmaceutical company Vitrum AB.
[10] During his late years, Jorpes translated Russian literature to Swedish, wrote biographies of Nobel-awarded scientists, and published popular science articles in the Social Democratic newspaper Arbetarbladet.