Gro Harlem Brundtland

Trained as a physician, Harlem Brundtland entered politics through the Labour Party and became Minister of the Environment in 1974. She took office as Norway's first female prime minister on 4 February 1981, though that first term lasted only eight months. She returned for a second term from May 1986 to October 1989, then a third from November 1990 until her surprise resignation in 1996, earning the nickname "mother of the nation" along the way. Between her second and third terms as prime minister, she chaired the Brundtland Commission, which produced the landmark Brundtland Report on sustaina…