Institutions Karolinska Institutet Role Academic Children Ola Rosling | Name Hans Rosling Spouse Agneta Rosling Awards Patron's Gold Medal | |
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Born 27 July 1948 (age 75)
Uppsala, Sweden ( 1948-07-27 ) Alma mater Uppsala University
St. John's Medical College Thesis Cassava, Cyanide, and Epidemic Spastic Paraparesis: A Study in Mozambique on Dietary Cyanide Exposure (1986) Known for Gapminder Foundation, Trendalyzer Books Cassava Toxicity and Food Security: A Review of Health Effects of Cyanide Exposure from Cassava and of Ways to Prevent These Effects Education Uppsala University, St. John's Medical College Profiles | ||
DON'T PANIC — Hans Rosling showing the facts about population
Hans Rosling (born 27 July 1948) is a Swedish medical doctor, academic, statistician and public speaker. He is Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institutet and co-founder and chairman of the Gapminder Foundation, which developed the Trendalyzer software system.
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Biography
Rosling was born in Uppsala, Sweden. From 1967 to 1974 Rosling 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.
On 21 August 1981, Rosling discovered an outbreak of konzo, a paralytic disease, and the investigations that followed earned him a Ph.D. degree at Uppsala University in 1986. He spent two decades studying outbreaks of this disease in remote rural areas across Africa and supervised more than ten Ph.D. students. 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 has also focused on other links between economic development, agriculture, poverty and health. He has been health adviser to WHO, UNICEF and several aid agencies. In 1993 he was one of the initiators of Medecins Sans Frontieres 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 world view.
Rosling presented the television documentary The Joy of Stats, which was broadcast in the United Kingdom by BBC Four in December 2010. 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 annunciation of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Gapminder
Rosling co-founded the Gapminder Foundation together with his son Ola Rosling and daughter-in-law Anna Rosling Ronnlund. Gapminder developed the Trendalyzer software that converts international statistics into moving, interactive graphics. His lectures using Gapminder graphics to visualise world development have won awards. The interactive animations are freely available from the Foundation's website. On 16 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. Rosling is also 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 Magazine, and in 2011 as one of 100 most creative people in business by the Fast Company Magazine. In 2011 he was elected member of the Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences and in 2012 as member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Personal health
At the age of 20, doctors told Rosling that there was something wrong with his liver and as a consequence Rosling stopped drinking alcohol. In 1989, Rosling was diagnosed with Hepatitis C. Over the years this progressed and Rosling developed liver cirrhosis. In the beginning of 2013 he was in early stages of liver failure. However, at the same time new Hepatitis C drugs were released and Rosling went to Japan to buy the drugs needed for curing the infection. He has since expressed concerns in media over the restricted use of the new drugs due to high costs, stating that it is a crime to not give every Hepatitis C patient access to the drugs.