Hans Rosling

Hans Rosling (1948–2017) was a Swedish physician, academic, and public health educator known for making global development statistics accessible to wide audiences. Trained in medicine and public health, he became a professor at the Karolinska Institute and worked in international health, including research on the disease konzo in Africa. In 2005 he co-founded the Gapminder Foundation, which developed tools and visualizations to help people understand trends in health, population, and economic development. Rosling’s energetic lectures and animated charts popularized a data-driven view of the world and challenged common misconceptions about poverty and progress.