His father Israel Hedenius (1868–1932) was in 1900 a doctor of medicine and teacher of medical practice, and in 1927 was appointed personal physician to the King of Sweden.

[1] On 8 June 1979, Hedenius received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Theology at Uppsala University, Sweden.

According to the text at the back of the book, Hedenius was "a person with strong musical, artistic and literary interests.

[3] Hedenius was best-known for his book, Tro och vetande (Belief and Knowledge), published in 1949 under the influence of Bertrand Russell and analytic philosophy.

Amongst other things, he proposed that the study of religions and their development should be separated from theology and become a non-religious academic discipline.