He was a member of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters from 1927, and of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters from 1929. From 1946 to 1950 he was the secretary-general of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters, and he chaired the Norwegian Mathematical Society from 1953 to 1959 and the Norwegian Botanical Society from 1957 to 1959. He chaired the Student Society in Trondheim in 1920, and later held speeches during political meetings there. He was a member of Clarté, affiliated with Mot Dag. He denounced communism after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. During the martial law in Trondheim in 1942, organized by the occupying Nazi authorities, he was imprisoned at Falstad concentration camp. He was one of the first prisoners there; he had the prisoner number 53. He avoided execution unlike some others who were arrested during martial law, but he remained imprisoned from 9 March 1942 to 3 August 1943.
