Bill Frist

William Harrison Frist is an American physician, businessman, and policymaker who served as a United States senator for Tennessee from 1995 to 2007. A member of the Republican Party, he also served as Senate majority leader from 2003 to 2007. Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Frist studied government and health care policy at Princeton University and earned a Doctor of Medicine degree from Harvard Medical School. He trained as a cardiothoracic transplant surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital and Stanford University School of Medicine, and later founded the Vanderbilt Transplant Center. In the 1994 United States Senate election in Tennessee, he defeated incumbent Democratic senator Jim Sasser.