Karl Fagerström is born in Sweden 1946. He studied at the University of Uppsala and graduated as a licensed clinical psychologist 1975. At that time, he started a smoking cessation clinic and invented the Fagerstrom Test for Cigarette Dependence. In 1981 he got his Ph.D. on a dissertation about nicotine dependence and smoking cessation. In the end of the seventies and early eighties he served as the editor-in-chief for the Scandinavian Journal for Behaviour Therapy.
From 1983 through 1997 he worked for Pharmacia & Upjohn as Director of Scientific Information for Nicotine Replacement Products. He has worked with the nicotine gum Nicorette since 1975 and has been contributing to NRT developments such as patch, spray, pouch and inhaler. Ever since 1975 to 2010 he has been working clinically part-time. From 1997 to 2008 he worked with his private research clinic where he studied various drugs intended for treating nicotine dependence.
Currently he works with his own private consultancy (Fagerstrom Consulting). He is a founding member of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco and currently a Deputy Editor of the Nicotine & Tobacco Research. He started the European SRNT affiliate in 1999 of which he was been the president up to 2003.
His main research contributions have been in the fields of Behaviour Medicine, Tobacco and Nicotine with 170 peer reviewed publications of which he is the first author of 100.
The current main interests are on understanding the positive effects of nicotine and reducing harm and exposure to tobacco toxins among all those who cannot give up smoking. He was awarded the WHO medal 1999 for outstanding work in tobacco control and 2013 he was the recipient of the Award on Clinical Science from the Society for Research on Tobacco and Nicotine.