Hammarskjöld, Dag (Hjalmar Agne Carl) (1905–1961)

Dag Hammarskjöld of Sweden, second secretary general of the United Nations, 1953–61. He was killed in an air crash whilst attempting to mediate a peaceful settlement in the Congo, where fighting had broken out between the governing factions following independence. He was posthumously awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Swedish secretary general of the United Nations (UN) 1953–61. His role as a mediator and negotiator, particularly in areas of political conflict, helped to increase the prestige and influence of the UN significantly, and his name is synonymous with the peacekeeping work of the UN today. He was killed in a plane crash while involved in a controversial peacekeeping mission in Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). He was posthumously awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1961 for his peacekeeping work as secretary general of the UN.

Hammarskjöld was born in Jönköping, Sweden, the son of the Swedish prime minister 1914–17, and attended university in Uppsala and Stockholm, where he read economics. After serving as chairman of the bank of Sweden, he entered government, and in 1951 joined the Swedish delegation to the UN. In 1953 he was elected to replace the first secretary general of the UN, Trygve Lie, and was reelected in 1957.

Hammarskjöld was known for his personal involvement in peace missions, notably in the Middle East, where he helped to maintain order after the 1956 Suez Crisis, and in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he was strongly criticized for sending in a UN peacekeeping force by the USSR.