Fredholm was born in Stockholm in 1866. He obtained his PhD at
Uppsala University in 1898, under the supervision of
Gösta Mittag-Leffler. He was
docent at
Stockholm University from 1898 to 1906 and professor from 1906 until his death. In 1914 he was elected a member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and in 1922 a foreign member of the
Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters. Beside his academic career he was recruited to the
Swedish Social Insurance Agency when it was founded in 1902. He later served as an actuary at the insurance company Skandia (1904-1927), where his Fredholm equation was used to calculate buyback-prices. From 1911, he was married to Agnes Maria Liljeblad, the secretary of
Mittag-Leffler. ==Mathematical work==