Swedish botanist. Harling was born in Stockholm and grew up on the island of Lidingo. He was a good student and won prizes in practical biology and would study botany text books and learn about the museums and herbaria of Europe and North America. He entered the Botanical Institute at the University of Stockholm but his studies were interrupted by the Second World War in 1941, when he was drafted into the Swedish army and posted in the Arctic Circle on the border of Norway and Finland. In 1944 he was released with honours without having to fight in any battles due to the neutrality of Sweden. He resumed his degree, studying all aspects of plant biology.
In 1946 he was awarded a fellowship to travel with a Swedish-Finnish botanical expedition to Ecuador with the ethno-botanist Professor Karsten. They spent five months in Guayaquil before the expedition began due to lack of funds. Harling, however, was presented with the administration of a hacienda, 'Clementine', 10 kilometers from Babahoyo, due to his friendship with the Consul Ivan Bohman. Given a modest salary and two helpers Harling was able to continue collecting and studying plants in the surrounding virgin rainforests and pastures where he was able to plant species of coffee, cacao and rice. He worked hard, putting up with mosquitos and snakes, and once having to kill a tigrillo that tried to attack a horse on his property; but his reward was the formation of a collection of over 2,000 specimens. During this time he travelled throughout the mountains and east of the country and collecting with distinguished Ecuadorean botanists.
In 1947 he returned to Sweden to classify his specimens in the National Museum of Stockholm, and spent four years working on a PhD thesis, entitled 'Embryological studies in the Compositae' which was published in 1951. Until 1958 he was Assistant Professor of Systematic Botany in the University of Stockholm, during which time he married baronesa Anna Maria Hummerhielm and had two children.
In 1958 he returned to Ecuador for a year, collecting 5,000 specimens and focusing on the region of Esmareldas. Between 1959 and 1968 he was Professor of Systematic Botany and later Director of the Botanic Museum of Gothenburg. Harling then undertook his third and final expedition to Ecuador, spending six months gathering information to create a Monograph of the Ciclantaseae. He travelled with his wife in Peru and Brazil, arriving in Quito to publish his Flora of Ecuador, a unique and widely praised work. In 1947 he entered the Academy of Sciences in Sweden and retired in 1986. Harling was awarded the 'Orden Nacional al Mérito del Ecuador' in Guayaquil in 2002 for his contribution to the understanding of Ecuadorean flora.
