Holger Forchhammer

Forchhammer was born on 21 October 1866 as the son of Dr. Phil Johannes Forchhammer, a rector in the Aalborg University, later at Herlufsholm School, where he became a student of medicine in 1884, taking his master's degree in 1891. Forchhammer was a reserve doctor at Kysthospitalet in Refsnæs in 1893–94, and two years later, in 1896, he became the head of the medical consultation room of Denmark's first hospital in the present-day meaning of the word, the Frederiks Hospital. He was close friends with the doctor and Nobel Prize winner Niels Ryberg Finsen, and one of Finsen's closest collaborators in his first years, when he was struggling to gain resonance for his important ideas. He thus became a doctor at Finsen's Medical Light Institute in Copenhagen in 1898, where he was chief physician from 1899 to 1912. When Finsen become too weak to do anything, it was Forchhammer who, at the medical congress in Paris in 1900, struck the decisive blow for Finsen's light treatment.

In addition to being a physician, Forchhammer was also a sportsman, developing an interest in cricket and football in the 1880s, two sports that at the time were still practically unknown in the country. In 1883, a group of students who had just graduated from the Frederiksborg Latin School moved to Copenhagen to study at the University of Copenhagen, where the following year they founded the Fredericia Studenternes Kricketklub (FSK), a cricket club so they could play cricket again. Due to a collaboration with Herlufsholm School, where Holger's father was a rector, which revolves around the recruitment of talented players from that school, Holger Forchhammer and his brother Johannes were central figures in the foundation of FSK, with Holger becoming the club's first president. When Kjøbenhavns Boldklub (KB) took the initiative to look at the different forms of football and their laws in 1886, Holger from FSK was asked to be involved and he accepted. In 1886, Forchhammer, together with Frederik Markmann, Ludwig Sylow, and E. Wescher, translated the English association rules into Danish, so from then on rules such as offside and "hand on the ball" were used in Danish football. These rules were first used in a match the following year, in 1887. Prior to this, the matches would be played with a mixture of rugby and football rules, so this translation was a big step in the development of football in Denmark. He played football with Akademisk Boldklub (AB), and he even helped the…

During the 1893 fire at Vallø Castle, Forchhammer rescued people from the fire. For his efforts, Forchhammer was awarded the Danish Medal for noble deeds. Forchhammer also received the Russian Order of Saint Anna. Forchhammer married the actress Berthe Forchhammer. Together, the Forchhammers raised three children.

Forchhammer died on the 19th May 1946, at the age of 79. After Forchhammer died, one of his childhood friends (K. Bülow) wrote this about him: "He was not the typical unapproachable head doctor type, but a good and understanding friend who knew how to gather everything and everyone around the great task: to lead Niels Finsen's ideas to victory for the benefit of suffering people".