Professor Wigzell was the President of the Karolinska Institute between 1995-2003. He graduated from the Karolinska Institute as a Physician (MD). He also attained a DSc and took a post as a special cancer scientist with the Swedish Cancer Society. In 1971 he returned to the Karolinska as Acting Associate Professor in the Department of Tumor Biology. After two years he became a Professor in the Department of Immunology at Uppsala University Medical School. In 1982 he returned again to the Karolinska as a Professor in the Department of Immunology and in 1988 he became Director General of the National Bacteriological Laboratory in Stockholm.

In 1990 he was elected Chairman of the EU Concerted Research Programme into AIDS vaccination and from 1990-1992 he was Chairman of the Nobel Prize Committee for Medicine. In 1993 he was appointed Secretary-General of the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control. Since 1999 he has been the Chief Scientific Advisor to the Swedish Government. He is Adjunct Professor at Human Virology Institute at Baltimore, USA and Guest professor at Ehime University in Japan

He was appointed Chairman of the Nobel Assembly in 2000. He has for two periods been the chairman of the WHO-UNAIDS HIV vaccine committee and is a member of scitific advisory board of IAVI. Professor Wigzell is an elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, the Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, EMBO, Academia Europea, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and honorary member for life of the American Society for Immunology.

Professor Wigzell has been awarded a number of prizes including the Anders Jahre Medical Prize, the Erik Fernstrom’s Prize for Young Scientists, the Russel Weiser Lecturer Prize, the San Marino Prize and the Smith Lecture Award. He has published over 600 articles and is a member of the editorial boards of several international journals.