Professor Emerita Sigbritt Werner has died at the age of 86. Sigbritt Werner was known as a highly skilled clinician and appreciated teacher. Between 2001 and 2003, she was KI's first female vice president.
Sigbritt Werner (1938-2025) trained as a doctor at Karolinska Institutet (KI). She was fascinated early on by endocrinology, a then expanding specialty that handles metabolism and its control via hormones.
In collaboration with other specialists, she developed this highly specialised healthcare at what was then Karolinska Hospital, where she was given a central role in national specialist training.
As a senior physician and clinical teacher at Huddinge Hospital, where she worked from 1996, Sigbritt Werner was given a key role in the establishment of a centre for metabolism and endocrinology.
A key challenge here was to reconcile different professional cultures as endocrinologists and internal medicine were integrated into a joint clinic with endocrine surgeons, andrologists and specialists in gender reassignment, obesity and anorexia treatment.
Sigbritt Werner taught students and doctoral students with great enthusiasm, and her skills as a clinician contributed to her being elected as the first female vice-president at Karolinska Institutet.
As a strong representative of clinical activities, she was appointed vice-president at KI from 2001 to 2003, when she was responsible for collaboration with the then county council.
Sigbritt Werner also lectured around the world at an advanced age, published scientific articles on an ongoing basis and was the editor of a highly appreciated textbook in endocrinology, now in its third edition. Sigbritt Werner died on 30 August 2025.
The article is based on an obituary by Sigbritt Werner's KI colleagues and friends Bo Angelin, Jan Bolinder and Jan Palmblad.
