Jonathan Mann, Formerly of Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, Dies in Plane Crash

By William J. Cromie

Gazette Staff

Jonathan M. Mann, renowned AIDS researcher and champion of human rights, was killed in the crash of Swissair Flight 111 on Sept. 2. The former François-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of Health and Human Rights was 51.

Mann's wife, Mary Lou Clemente-Mann, an AIDS-vaccine researcher at Johns Hopkins University, also died when the plane plunged into the ocean off Halifax, Nova Scotia, en route to Geneva, Switzerland.

Mann founded the World Health Organization's Global Programme on AIDS and was founding director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health.

"Jonathan made a vital difference to the lives of millions of people around the globe," said Provost Harvey Fineberg, who formerly was Dean of the School of Public Health. "He was both a visionary and a man of action who made vital contributions to AIDS prevention and to the field of health and human rights. His leadership will be sorely missed."

Mann served on the faculty of the Harvard School of Public Health from 1990 to the end of 1997. He left to become founding dean of the School of Public Health of Allegheny University of the Health Sciences in Philadelphia.

"His death is a tragic loss for this University and the world at large," noted Dorothy Brown, president of Allegheny. "In addition to being a recognized figure in the world of public health, Dr. Mann was an incredibly decent and caring human being."

A native of Boston, Mann graduated from Harvard College in 1969. After receiving an M.D. from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis in 1974, he worked as an epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and for the New Mexico Health Services Division.

Mann returned to Harvard to earn a Master of Public Health degree in 1980. Afterward, he energetically applied himself to reducing the spread of AIDS in Africa. Mann founded and directed an AIDS research initiative based in the Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire). Restless and hard-driving, he moved on to the directorship of the World Health Organization's Global Programme on AIDS in 1986.

Mann returned to Harvard again in 1990 as professor of epidemiology and international health. He played a major role in raising funds to establish the Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, and became its first director in 1993.

At Harvard, Mann made a lasting impression on the lives of many faculty and students. Of his own efforts, he said: "When the history of our time is written, our greatest contribution may be our commitment and our concrete, pragmatic work -- at a time of confusion and despair -- toward a vision of achievable and sustainable human well-being."

Mann is survived by his mother Ida Mann, of Newton, Mass., and three children by a first marriage: Naomi of Washington, D.C., her twin Lydia of Boston, and Aaron, a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa.

A memorial service will be held at 3 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 27, in Kresge Cafeteria at the School of Public Health.