 Wickman became known for his achievements in polio research.As a pupil of Karl Oskar Medin and studying the findings of Jakob Heine and Adolf von Strümpell he made detailed clinical and epidemiological studies to establish the hitherto controversial hypothesis that polio can be transferred through physical contact.He was provided with illustrative evidence mainly from the great Swedish epidemic of 1905 with a total of 1,031 recorded cases.