Director, Smokers Information Center,
Helsingborg, Sweden

Karl Fagerström, PhD, was born in Sweden in 1946, is married, and has 2 children. He studied at the University of Uppsala and graduated as a licensed clinical psychologist in 1975. At that time he started to run a smoking cessation clinic. In 1981 he earned his PhD with a dissertation on nicotine-dependence and smoking cessation. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he served as the Editor-in-Chief for the Scandinavian Journal for Behaviour Therapy.

From 1983 through 1997 he worked for Pharmacia & Upjohn as Director of Scientific Information for Nicotine Replacement Products. He has worked with the nicotine gum Nicorette since 1975 and has been contributing to nicotine-replacement therapy developments such as the patch, spray, and inhaler. Since 1975 he has been doing clinical work part-time.

Currently he works with his own private consultancy (Fagerström Consulting and the Smokers Information Center). He is a founding member of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT). He started the European affiliate in 1999, and he was its president up to 2003. In 2003 he also became President-elect of the mother SRNT.

His main research contributions have been in the fields of behavioral medicine, tobacco, and nicotine with over 130 peer-reviewed publications of which he is the lead author of 80.

Dr Fagerström’s current main interests are around testing new treatments for smoking cessation and reducing harm and exposure to tobacco toxins among those who cannot give up smoking. He has given the name to a nicotine-dependence scale (the Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence) and was awarded the WHO Medal in 1999 for outstanding work in tobacco control.