Åkesson graduated from Österportskolan in Ystad in 1973, and was awarded his Master of Science in Engineering Physics at Lund University in 1979. He became a Doctor of Philosophy in the field of physics at Lund University in 1986 with Guy von Dardel as his supervisor with a thesis about jets.[3] He continued with his research about jets in CERN. In 1996-2005 he also participated in the management team for the development of the international ATLAS experiment, which among other things was one of the two LHC experiments involved in the discovery of the Higgs boson in July 2012.[4] Between 2005 and 2006 he was Chairman of the European Committee on Future Accelerators (ECFA), where he was responsible for developing a European strategy for particle physics. In 2007-2009 he was President of the CERN Council, where one of his main goals was to start up their particle accelerator and start the experiments at Large Hadron Collider.[5]
^Forkman, Bengt; Holmin Verdozzi, Kristina, eds. (2016). Fysik i Lund: i tid och rum (in Swedish). Lund: Fysiska institutionen i samarbete med Gidlunds förlag. p. 314. ISBN9789178449729.
