Biography

Knut Lindberg was a Swedish medical doctor and zoologist. Having completed his schooling in Stockholm, he studied medicine in Paris. He then left Europe for India in 1924, serving as a medical officer with the American Presbyterian Mission in Allahabad.

Lindberg left the Allahabad mission in 1926 to undertake further training in London, where he was admitted as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons. Returning to India, he was appointed chief medical officer with Barsi Light Railways at Kurduvadi, close to Bombay. Lindberg remained here until 1947, in which year he retired and returned to Sweden.

The Barsi railroad employees frequently suffered from guinea worm disease, caused by drinking water infested with copepods. Lindberg began to study these tiny crustaceans and travelled to other parts of India and Iran to look at their distribution and the prevalence of the related guinea worm disease. This work resulted in his first paper on guinea worm, published in 1935.

It was after his retirement that Lindberg began to concentrate on zoology, specialising in cave fauna. He also became more and more interested in the natural history of Afghanistan, where he gathered zoological and botanical specimens in 1947 and again on several expeditions undertaken between 1957 and 1962. On these trips he explored Kabul, Chagcharan (Ghor Province), Obe, Oruzgan, Panjshir, Badakhshan and Maymana, among other locations.

Lindberg died in a road accident near Lund in his native Sweden.

Sources:
M. Alam, 2009, "Plant Collectors in Afghanistan", Bulletin de la Société vaudoise des Sciences naturelles, 91(3): 323
Y. Löwegren, 1964, "In Memoriam Knut Lindberg", Crustaceana, 6(3): 233-234.