Brock Chisholm

A Canadian psychiatrist and decorated First World War veteran who became the first Director-General of the World Health Organization, serving from 1948 to 1953. Chisholm had earlier become the first psychiatrist to head the medical branch of any national army, serving as Director General of Medical Services for the Canadian Army during the Second World War. As executive secretary of the World Health Organization's Interim Commission beginning in 1946, he played a central role in drafting the organization's constitution, including its now widely quoted definition of health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. When the World Health Organization formally came into being in 1948, Chisholm was elected its first Director-General.