Jan G. Waldenström

He was born in Stockholm into a medical family: his father, Johann Henning Waldenström (1877–1972), was a professor of orthopedic surgery in Stockholm, and his grandfather Johan Anton Waldenström (1839–1879) was professor of internal medicine in Uppsala.

He was the head of the Department of Medicine at Malmö General Hospital until his retirement in 1972.

Waldenström first described, in 1944, patients with a disease that has subsequently been named for him, Waldenström's macroglobulinemia, a "hyperviscosity syndrome" in which symptoms are caused by abnormal lymphocytes that prevent normal bone marrow function, which causes anemia and hepatosplenomegaly, and secrete large immunoglobulins, causing bleeding difficulties.

[1] Waldenström's other clinical investigations included studies on the various porphyrias, on the benign hypergammaglobulinemic purpura of Waldenström, on chronic active hepatitis, hemosiderosis, on Bruton's hypogammaglobulinemia, paraneoplastic phenomena and on carcinoid syndrome.

He was a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Sciences and was an honorary member of the British Royal Society of Medicine.