Alf Brubakk was born 1941 and completed his MD at the Justus Liebig University, Giessen, Germany. After internship and a year in general practice, he received a grant to establish 
cooperation between the hospital in Trondheim, Norway and the University of Trondheim. This was given to start projects related to medical technology. At this time, there was no medical facility at the University of Trondheim and the grant was an effort to establish this. He and his colleagues developed a computer model of the cardiovascular system and started work on the use of ultrasound Doppler in cardiology. This later led to the establishment of VINGMED (now one of the largest companies in Scandinavia for distribution and services of high quality medical technology products) and to the development of the ultrasonic equipment that is now manufactured by General Electric. This work was the basis for his PhD on "Methods for studying flow dynamics in the left ventricle and the aorta in man". After working in cardiology for five years, he did two and a half years of anaesthesiology, after which he was appointed as Assistant Professor in Applied Physiology. This lasted for two years until he joined the Norwegian Underwater Institute in Bergen to participate in a number of saturation dive studies, Deepex I and II. He was in Bergen for five years, where he mainly worked on developing the use of ultrasound for studying decompression and bubble formation. In 1985 Alf returned to Trondheim, initially as a consultant mainly studying peripheral vascular disease. During this time, he established a programme in the physiology and medicine of extreme environments and was appointed Professor of Applied Environment Physiology in 1992. He has recently retired from that position but remains Professor Emeritus. He has been Head of the Diving Medical Advisory Committee (DMAC) the President of EUBS, and has twice received the Behnke Award from the UHMS.
(Photo taken at Stokkøya near Tronheim, Norway during a dive course.)