Dr. Jonathan M. Mann '69, a former School of Public Health (SPH) professor who crusaded for AIDS activism and emphasized the relationship between health and human rights, died in Wednesday's crash of Swissair Flight 111 off the Canadian coast. He was 51.

Mann's colleagues said his initiative and dedication in AIDS-related work and his constant campaign for human rights made him stand out personally and professionally.

"Without illusions about the difficulties to be overcome, he constantly strived to change the world to advance human rights and to improve public health," University Provost Harvey V. Fineberg '67 wrote in an e-mail message. Fineberg was SPH dean from Mann's appointment in 1990 until 1997.

Throughout his life, Mann was "a founder and innovator," Fineberg said.

Over the course of his career, Mann founded or was a founding director of four different public health programs.

In 1986, he became the founding director of the Global Programme on AIDS (GPA), a program under the umbrella of the World Health Organization (WHO).

Under Mann's direction, the GPA evolved from a two-person operation to one of WHO's largest programs, with an annual budget in excess of $100 million.

He left WHO in 1990 over a dispute with the director-general over global AIDS strategy, and moved to SPH.

"His main goal was to promote human rights and the dignity of all people, and to really change the way the world works," said Mary Pat Kieffer, administrator of Harvard's Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, which Mann founded and directed from 1993 to January 1998.

Before he founded the Bagnoud Center, Mann was director of the International AIDS Center of the Harvard AIDS Institute.

Bringing Humanity to Harvard

Mann also strove to bring his commitment to human rights both to his own students and to those throughout the SPH.

He taught a popular undergraduate course, General Education 103, "AIDS, Health and Human Rights."

"When he taught his undergraduate course, he really hoped to infect people with a desire to change the world," Kieffer said.

And apparently, he succeeded.