Per Östborn

Visual illusions

As a kid, I was fascinated by the impossible figures made by the artist Oscar Reutersvärd, who lived in  my home town Lund. I tried to make my own such figures. Here are some pictures in which it is ambiguous what is figure and what is background.

Panait Istrati - a literary love

Sometimes it's love at first paragraph. That was the case when I started reading Panait Istrati's novel Kyra Kyralina.

Diffusion of innovations in antiquity

Together with my childhood friend Henrik Gerding, a historian and archaeologist, I have been involved in a research project concerning  the diffusion of fired bricks across the Mediterranean during the Hellenistic period.

Transport and environment

I'm a board member and work part time for The Swedish Association of Green Motorists (Gröna Bilister). Sometimes I also work as a consultant for other organisations, authorities and companies on issues relating to the environmental aspects of transport.

Children's books

While working at a daycare centre, my favourite occupation was reading stories to the kids. After that, I tried to write my own children's stories, but only one of them got published. I have also written an educational children's book about outer space.

A strict epistemic approach to physics

In this research project, I try to do for physics what Kant did for metaphysics - to adopt a strict epistemic perspective, assuming that the structure of knowledge reflects the structure of the world.