Hans Rosling was a Swedish doctor, statistician, academic and co-founder and director of the Gapminder Foundation, an organization that promotes the use and understanding of statistics to achieve sustainable global development. A product of Gapminder is Trendalyzer, a program that converts statistics into moving, interactive graphics. Rosling used this program to identify trends in areas such as global health and poverty. In 1993, Rosling helped co-found Médecines sans Frontières in Sweden. He also served as an adviser to the World Health Organization and UNICEF. He was professor of international health at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm and the author of “Global Health: An Introductory Textbook.” In 2012, he appeared as one of “Time’s 100 Most Influential People.” Rosling was an elected member of both the Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences and the Swedish Academy of Sciences and was the recipient of multiple honorary doctorates. He was also awarded the Royal Patron’s Medal from London’s Royal Geographical Society. Rosling died in 2017 at the age of 68 after a year-long battle with pancreatic cancer.
