Hans Rosling (Swedish: [ˈhɑːns ˈrûːslɪŋ]; 27 July 1948 – 7 February 2017) was a Swedish physician, academic, and public speaker. He was a professor of international health at Karolinska Institute and was the co-founder and chairman of the Gapminder Foundation, which developed the Trendalyzer software system. Widely regarded as one of the most influential physicians and geographers in the modern world, he held presentations around the world, including several TED Talks in which he promoted the use of data (and data visualization) to explore development issues. His posthumously published book Factfulness, coauthored with his daughter-in-law Anna Rosling Rönnlund and son Ola Rosling, became an international bestseller.
Life and career Rosling was born in Uppsala, Sweden, on 28 July 1948. From 1967 to 1974, he studied statistics and medicine at Uppsala University, and in 1972, he studied public health at St. John's Medical College, Bangalore, India. He became a licensed physician in 1976, and from 1979 to 1981, he served as district medical officer in Nacala in northern Mozambique. In 1981, he began investigating an outbreak of konzo, a paralytic disease first described in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. His investigations earned him a Ph.D. at Uppsala University in 1986. Rosling was dyslexic. Rosling presented the television documentary The Joy of Stats, which was broadcast in the United Kingdom by BBC Four in December 2010 and has been made available on demand on BBC iPlayer since. He presented a documentary Don't Panic — The Truth about Population for the This World series using a Musion 3D projection display, which appeared on BBC Two in the UK in November 2013. In 2015 he presented the documentary Don't Panic: How to End Poverty in 15 Years, which was produced by Wingspan and aired on the BBC just ahead of the announcement of the United Nations's Sustainable Development Goals. Rosling was a sword swallower, as demonstrated in the final moments of his second talk at the TED conference. In 2009 he was listed as one of 100 leading global thinkers by Foreign Policy, and in 2011 as one of 100 most creative people in business by Fast Company. In 2011 he was elected member of the Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences and in 2012 as member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences. He was included in the Time 100 list of the world's 100 most influential people in 2012.
Work in healthcare Rosling spent two decades studying outbreaks of konzo, a paralytic disease, in remote rural areas across Africa and supervised more than 10 PhD students. His work with Julie Cliff, Johannes Mårtensson, Per Lundqvist, and Bo Sörbo found that outbreaks occur among hunger-stricken rural populations in Africa where a diet dominated by insufficiently processed cassava results in simultaneous malnutrition and high dietary cyanide intake. Rosling's research also concerned other links between economic development, agriculture, poverty, and health. He worked as full-time consultant to the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) on primary health care from 1984 to 1990 and then as their consultant on HIV until 1994, traveling often to Sida program countries. He was at this time based at the Maternal and Child Care Department (International) at Uppsala University. He was a health adviser to the World Health Organization, UNICEF and several aid agencies. In 1993 he was one of the initiators of Médecins Sans Frontières in Sweden. At Karolinska Institutet he was head of the Division of International Health (IHCAR) from 2001 to 2007. As chairman of the Karolinska International Research and Training Committee (1998–2004), he started health research collaborations with universities in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. He started new courses on global health and co-authored a textbook on global health that promotes a fact-based worldview.
Trendalyzer and Gapminder
Rosling's son, Ola Rosling, built the Trendalyzer software to animate data compiled by the UN and the World Bank that helped him explain the world with graphics. Rosling co-founded the Gapminder Foundation together with his son Ola and daughter-in-law Anna Rosling Rönnlund to develop Trendalyzer to convert international statistics into moving, interactive graphics. The provocative presentations that have resulted have made him famous, and his lectures using Gapminder graphics to visualize world development have won awards. The interactive animations are freely available from the Foundation's website.
In March 2007, Google acquired the Trendalyzer software with the intention to scale it up and make it freely available for public statistics. In 2008, Google made available a Motion Chart Google Gadget and in 2009 the Public Data Explorer.
Personal life and death When he was 20, in 1968, doctors told Rosling that there was something wrong with his liver and as a consequence, he stopped drinking alcohol. Aged 29, with a young family, he had testicular cancer which was successfully treated. In 1989, he was diagnosed with hepatitis C. Over the years this progressed and he developed liver cirrhosis. At the beginning of 2013, he was in the early stages of liver failure. However, at the same time, new hepatitis C drugs were released and he went to Japan to buy the drugs needed to treat the infection. He expressed concerns in the media over the restricted use of the new drugs due to high costs, stating that it is a crime not to give every person with hepatitis C access to the drugs. Rosling was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2016, and died of the disease on 7 February 2017.
Awards 2006 – Enlightener of the Year from the Swedish Skeptics Association 2010 – The Gannon Award for the Continued Pursuit of Human Advancement (US) 2010 – Illis quorum medal 2012 – Time 100 most influential people list 2012 – Harvard Humanitarian Award 2014 – Honorary Doctor at Uppsala University, Sweden 2014 – The Patron's Medal from the Royal Geographical Society of London 2017 – United Nations Population Award
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