Svante Arrhenius was born in 1859 in Vik, Sweden. After attending the Cathedral School in Uppsala, Arrhenius studied mathematics, chemistry and physics at the University of Uppsala. He passed the candidate's examination in 1878 and in 1881 went to Stockholm to work under physicist Erik Edlund of the Swedish Academy of Sciences. He obtained his doctorate in 1884; his doctoral dissertation discussed the electrolytic theory of dissociation. He was appointed lecturer in physical chemistry at the University of Uppsala in 1884. A travel grant from the Swedish Academy enabled him to work abroad in Amsterdam, Berlin, Leipzig and Vienna. In 1905 he became director of the physical chemistry department of the Nobel Institute.

While most of his work prior to 1900 involved contributions to the theory of electrolytic dissociation, after 1900 Arrhenius devoted his attention to the physics and chemistry of cosmic and meteorological phenomena. In 1903 he published his Lehrbuch der kosmischen Physik, the first textbook on cosmic physics. He was also concerned with the theory of immunity, an interest that resulted in two textbooks: Immunochemistry (1907) and Quantitative Laws in Biological Chemistry (1915).

Svante Arrhenius died in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1927.