U Thant, Secretary-General of the United Nations

Portrait of U Thant, who was unanimously appointed by the U.N. General Assembly on 3 November 1961 as Acting Secretary-General of the U.N., for a term of office extending until 10 April 1963.
Born at Pantanaw, Burma, on 22 January 1909, Acting Secretary-General U Thant was educated at National High School in Pantanaw and at University College, Rangoon. He served as Advisor to U Nu, the Prime Minister of Burma, at the first Colombo Prime Ministers' Conference at Colombo, at the second held at Bogor, Indonesia, at the Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955, and at the Belgrade Conference of Non-Aligned Nations, in 1961. From 1957 up to the time of his appointment, U Thant was Burma's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, with the rank of Ambassador, and had been Chairman of the Burmese delegation at each session of the UN General Assembly since then. In 1961 he served as Chairman of the Committee on a United Nations Development Fund and as Chairman of the United Nations Congo Conciliation Commission.