Olov Hilding Faxén (29 March 1892 – 1 June 1970) was a Swedish physicist who was primarily active within mechanics.
Faxén received his doctorate in 1921 at Uppsala University with the thesis Einwirkung der Gefässwände auf den Widerstand gegen die Bewegung einer kleinen Kugel in einer zähen Flüssigkeit ("Influence of the container walls on the resistance against movement by a small ball in a viscous fluid").
[2] This was a problem previously treated by Carl Wilhelm Oseen (1910) and Horace Lamb (1911), but incompletely solved.
[3] After the death of Ivar Fredholm, Faxén temporarily upheld the chair in mathematical physics at Stockholm University College, before Oskar Klein was made the new professor.
[6] Together with the Norwegian physicist Johan Holtsmark, Faxén published a work in 1927 about scattering of electrons in gases.