Kofi Annan, former United Nations secretary-general, died last week at the age of 80. Annan was, in the words of current U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, "a guiding force for good." It is telling that Annan — with the U.N. — won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001, only halfway through his tenure as secretary-general. When he left the world body, he continued, perhaps with even more vigor, efforts to bring peace to troubled areas and to help develop Africa, his native continent. It was a remarkable life, one rendered even more impressive by the restraint and reserve that marked his career — especially given the bombast and spectacle that so many of today's leaders prefer.

Annan was born a twin in the Gold Coast, a British colony that became Ghana, the descendant of tribal chiefs on both sides of his family. He won a scholarship to study at Macalester College in Minnesota, where he received a B.A. in economics. That opened the door to a job as a junior administrative and budget officer at the World Health Organization in 1962.

What he originally assumed would be a temporary stop became a career. He worked his way up the U.N. bureaucracy, winning the attention of Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in 1990 for winning and then organizing the release of 900 U.N. personnel and dependents held hostage in Baghdad as well as the airlift of thousands of Asian workers back to their homes as hostilities appeared imminent. Two years later, he was named deputy chief of peacekeeping, one of the most important jobs in the entire U.N. structure; he later became head of that department. In that capacity, Annan presided over the record expansion of peacekeeping operations to 75,000 troops deployed in 19 missions.