Frist, Bill (1952– )

US Republican politician, Senate majority leader from 2003. After a 20-year career in medicine, he was elected US senator for Tennessee in 1994, defeating a popular three-term incumbent, and was re-elected in 2000. A leading authority in the Senate on medical issues, he worked to strengthen Medicare (the federally funded health-care programme) and to increase funding for global HIV/AIDS. Having helped lead the Republicans to regain control of the Senate in the 2002 elections, he was elected majority leader, despite having served fewer years in Congress than any majority leader previously.

Born in Nashville, Tennessee, he trained in medicine at Princeton University and Harvard Medical School. He trained in hospitals in the USA and England as a surgeon and became a specialist in heart and lung transplantation in the 1980s. In 1989 he founded the multi-organ Vanderbilt Transplant Center, today one of the leading transplant facilities in the USA.