Knut Bertram Broberg (1925-2005) was internationally acclaimed for his pioneering research in fracture mechanics, geophysics, biomechanics and mathematics. He graduated in 1949 from the Royal Institute of Technology (RIT), Stockholm. After employment as Engineer at the Royal Swedish Fortifications Administration, he became Associate Professor of Solid Mechanics at RIT in 1959 and two years later, 36 years old, the first Professor at the Lund Institute of Technology (LIT), a position that he held until his retirement in 1990.

In 1956, Bertram Broberg defended his TeknD thesis, Shock Waves in Elastic and Elastic-Plastic Media, which was later translated into Russian and Chinese. Other publications include The Propagation of a Brittle Crack (1960), the first solution for a dynamically expanding crack, "Crack Growth Criteria and Non-Linear Fracture Mechanics" (1971), which suggested the J-Integral as a criterion for incipient crack growth (now widely accepted in both research work and engineering), "On the Mechanical Behaviour of Intervertebral Discs" (1983), "The Cell Model of Materials" (1997) and other papers on biomechanics. In 1999, he published a comprehensive volume on the foundations of fracture mechanics, Cracks and Fracture.

During 1961-65, Broberg was Prorector and later (1965-66) Rector of LIT. He was Vice-Chairman of the Committee for planning University Premises and Equipment in Southern Sweden 1964-79. In 1969, he was appointed by the Swedish Government to take part in an international committee, requested by the Ethiopian Government, for a review of technical education in Ethiopia. The Japan Society for Promotion of Science invited him to conduct research at Tohoko University, Sendai during three months in 1975 and he was invited by the California Institute of Technology as a Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar for six months in 1976. He also spent two years (1979-81) as Visiting Professor at Brown University and shorter periods in Poland (Kielce and Wroclaw) and Germany (Magdeburg). Since 1991 he was Senior Academic Fellow at the Department of Mathematical Physics, University College Dublin (UCD).

Bertram Broberg was a member of the Royal Swedish Academies of Sciences and of Engineering Sciences. He was Honorary Member of the Scanian Engineer's Club and a member of the Royal Physiographical Society. He was President of the International Association for Ecological Design 1982-92. His favourite hobby was cross-country skiing - even completing the 90km Vasaloppet in Sweden in 1995, after practicing on roller-skis on the streets of Dublin.