Karl Fagerström, born in Sweden in 1946, is married and has two children. He studied at the University of Uppsala and graduated as a licensed clinical psychologist 1975. At that time he started to run a smoking cessation clinic. In 1981 he got his Ph.D. on a dissertation about nicotine dependence and smoking cessation. In the end of the seventies and early eighties 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 NRT developments such as patch, spray and inhaler. Ever since 1975 he has been working clinically part-time.

Currently he works with his own private consultancy (Fagerstrom Consulting and the Smokers Information Center). He is a founding member of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. He started the European affiliate in 1999 of which he has been the president up to 2003. In 2003 he also became president elect of the international SRNT group.

His main research contributions have been in the fields of Behaviour Medicine, Tobacco and Nicotine with over 100 peer reviewed publications of which he is the first author of 75. His current main interest is on reducing harm and exposure to tobacco toxins among all those who cannot give up smoking. He has given the name to a nicotine dependence scale (The Fagerstrom Test For Nicotine Dependence) and was awarded the WHO medal 1999 for outstanding work in tobacco control.