Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson
Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, a political scientist, was elected president on 29 June 1996. He left office in 2016.
The fifth president of the republic, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, was born in Ísafjörður on 14 May 1943. His first wife was Guðrún Katrín Þorbergsdóttir (1934-1998), with whom he had two children, Guðrún Tinna and Svanhildur Dalla. His second wife is Dorrit Moussaieff (b. 1950).
Ólafur graduated from upper secondary school in 1962, completed a BA in economics and political science from the University of Manchester in 1965, and earned a PhD in political science from the same school five years later.
Ólafur Ragnar became a lecturer in political science at the University of Iceland in 1970 and was appointed professor of political science three years later. He served as a deputy member of parliament and member of parliament off and on from 1974 to 1995, primarily for the People’s Alliance, and was Minister of Finance from 1988 to 1991.
Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson served five terms as president, longer than anyone else to date. He was re-elected without opposition in 2000 and 2008 and in contested elections in 2004 and 2012.