Data guru Hans Rosling, a Swedish public health expert famous for combating scientific ignorance with catchy YouTube videos in his mission to promote a "fact-based world", has died at the age of 68, his foundation announced. Rosling, who described himself as an "edutainer", was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a year ago and passed away surrounded by his family in Uppsala, Sweden, the Gapminder foundation said.
A professor of international health at Stockholm's Karolinska Institutet, in 2007 Rosling decided to "drop out" to devote his time to promoting "a fact-based world view by converting the international statistics into moving, interactive, understandable and enjoyable graphics".
Challenging misconceptions about "developing" countries and finding ways to make data interesting, Rosling came to international notice with a 2006 TED talk on "The best stats you've ever seen", which has been viewed more than 11 million times online.
The Trendalyzer data visualisation software developed by his foundation was bought by Google in 2007.
