Nobel Prize Recipient. Gustaf Dalén received world-wide recognition as a Swedish scientist after being awarded the 1912 Nobel Prize in Physics. According to the Nobel Prize Committee, he award was given "for his invention of automatic regulators for use in conjunction with gas accumulators for illuminating lighthouses and buoys." He graduated from the Chalmers Institute at Gothenburg, as an engineer in 1896. He became Technical Chief of the Swedish Svenska Karbid- och Acetylen A.B. in 1901 and joined the Gas Accumulator Company where he became Chief Engineer in 1906. Working on automatic flashing beacons for lighthouses, his invention of the sun-valve, which causes a beacon to light automatically at dusk and extinguish itself at dawn, enabled lighthouses to function perfectly and unattended for periods of up to a year. He also invented a mixer for providing a constant and correct balance of gas and air for use in the incandescent mantle and a device for removing broken mantles and replacing them with new ones. For his endeavors with one single nomination, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics 1912. In addition he received a membership to the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences in 1913, the Academy of Science and Engineering in 1919, made Honorary Doctor of Lund University in 1918 and received the Morehead Medal of the International Acetylene Association. He lost his sight in 1912 in an accidental explosion in connection with an experiment but remained active as an industrial leader. After the incident, he was awarded the contract for lighting the Panama Canal and later turned to the field of thermal technics to invent a stove, now in universal use, which maintains cooking heat for 24 hours using only eight pounds of coal. He was married and had four children. He died at age 68 at his villa.