Bengt Edlen was born in 1906. He earned his B.SC in 1928 and his Ph.D. in 1934 from Uppsala University. Later, he joined Lund University at Professor of Physics in 1944. He is most well-known for his identification of the emission lines in the spectrum of the solar corona. He was elected a Fellow of OSA in 1965, and received the C.E.K. Mees Medal in 1966.