Margaret Hamburg

Margaret Ann Hamburg, known as Peggy, is an American physician and public health administrator, born in Chicago in 1955. She graduated from Harvard College in 1977, took her medical degree at Harvard Medical School in 1983 and trained in internal medicine at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. Her career has moved between medicine and government. In 1989 and 1990 she was assistant director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, where she took part in HIV and AIDS policy and research. As Commissioner of the New York City health department from 1991 she worked on a needle-exchange programme to reduce HIV transmission, a response to the return of tuberculosis, and the nation's first public health bioterrorism preparedness programme. She later served in the federal health department, worked on biological threats at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, and was the twenty-first Commissioner of the United States Food and Drug Administration from May 2009 to April 2015. She has chaired the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.