Hans Blix Biography

Dr. Hans Blix was born in 1928 in Uppsala.

Uppsala is in the middle of the Mälar valley in central Sweden. It is the birthplace of many great men and women: Carolus Linnaeus, Olof Rudbeck, the chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Anders Celsius. Six Nobel prize winners have come from Uppsala.

Blix studied at the University of Uppsala, Columbia University in the United States and has a law Ph.D. from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.

In 1959 he became Doctor of Laws at the Stockholm University and in 1960 was appointed associate professor in international law.

He joined Sweden's foreign ministry in 1963. From 1963 to 1976 Dr. Blix was Head of Department at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and served as Legal Adviser on International Law. In 1976 he became Under- Secretary of State at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in charge of international development co-operation. He was appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs in October 1978.

From 1961 until 1981 he was a member of Sweden's delegation to the United Nations General Assembly, and from 1962 to 1978 a member of the Swedish delegation to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.

Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency: 1981-1997.

He has an Honorary Doctorate from Moscow State University (1987) and is a recipient of the Henry de Wolf Smyth Award (Washington DC, 1988).

Replaced Australian Richard Butler at the head of Unmovic, Beating out Rolf Ekeus. Kofi Annan called to recruit him.

Executive Chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (Unmovic) since January 2000, and took up his duties in March 2000.

Has visited Tibet and Antarctica.

He has written several books on subjects associated with international and constitutional law and was leader of the Liberal Campaign Committee in favor of retention of the Swedish nuclear energy program in the referendum in 1980.