Säve-Söderbergh was born at Falun, the son of the neurologist Gotthard Söderbergh and Inga Säve.

He brought back fossils of Ichthyostega, by then the earliest known tetrapod, and published an extensive preliminary report on it in 1932.

Säve-Söderbergh went on to study the biostratigraphy of the East Greenland Palaeozoic[2][3][4] and the problem of skull bone homologies among fishes and tetrapods.

Other works by Säve-Söderbergh include a comparative study of the lateral line system[10] and an analysis of the trigeminal musculature in lower tetrapods.

[13] Säve-Söderbergh was made an honorary doctor at Uppsala in 1942 and was elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences shortly before his death.