Erik Waaler

Who is Erik Waaler?

Erik Waaler was a Norwegian professor of medicine.

He was born in Hamar as a son of physician Per Waaler and musician Fredrikke Amalie Holtermann Rynning. He was a brother of Georg and Rolf Waaler and uncle of Bjarne Waaler. In November 1929 he married Esther Fasmer Dahl, a daughter of priest and composer Alf Fasmer Dahl and sister of Titt Fasmer Dahl.

He finished his secondary education in Hamar in 1921, studied at the Royal Frederick University and graduated in 1927 with the candidate of medicine degree. He served at the hospitals in Hamar and Ullevål before working as a physician in Hamar from 1929 to 1930. After serving as an assistant physician in Oslo he took the doctor medicinae degree in 1935 with the doctoral thesis Studies on the Dissociation of the Dysentery Bacilli.

He was a research fellow at the Royal Frederick University from 1936 to 1938, staying at the Department of Pathology, Columbia University in the first year. From 1938 to 1940 he was a prosector at Rikshospitalet. In 1939 he discovered the rheumatoid factor.