Gro Harlem Brundtland

A Norwegian physician and stateswoman who served three terms as Prime Minister of Norway, becoming the country's first woman to hold the office, before leading the World Health Organization as its Director-General from 1998 to 2003. At the World Health Organization she pushed tobacco control and noncommunicable and infectious disease prevention onto the global public health agenda. Earlier, as chair of the World Commission on Environment and Development, she oversaw the 1987 report Our Common Future, which introduced the concept of sustainable development into international policy and helped shape the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Her career, spanning national politics, environmental policy and international public health leadership, made her one of the most prominent global health figures of the late twentieth century.