Lars Hörmander was born on January 24, 1931, on the southern coast of Sweden. His secondary schooling, as well as his undergraduate and doctoral studies, took place in Lund, Sweden. His principal teacher and adviser at the University of Lund was Marcel Riesz, until his retirement, and then Lars Gårding. In 1956 he worked in the USA, at the universities of Chicago, Kansas, Minnesota and New York, before returning to a chair at the University of Stockholm. He remained a frequent visitor to the US, particularly to Stanford, and was Professor at the IAS, Princeton from 1964 to 1968. In 1968 he accepted a chair at the University of Lund, and remained there until his retirement in 1996. He passed away on November 25, 2012, in Lund, at the age of 81.
Hörmander's life's work was devoted to the study of partial differential equations and its applications in complex analysis. In 1962 he was awarded the Fields Medal for his contributions to the general theory of linear partial differential operators. He was also awarded the Wolf Prize in 1988, and the Leroy P. Steele Prize in 2006. His Analysis of Linear Partial Differential Operators I–IV is considered a standard work on the subject of linear partial differential operators.