Thant Myint-U (Burmese: သန့်မြင့်ဦး [θa̰ɰ̃ mjɪ̰ɰ̃ ʔú]; born 31 January 1966) is a Burmese-American historian, writer, grandson of former United Nations Secretary-General U Thant, former UN official, former Myanmar peace process mediator, and an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
[5] He is also a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Christ's College, Cambridge and United Nations Special Adviser on Humanitarian Diplomacy.
He grew up in Riverdale, Bronx at the home of his maternal grandfather, the then-Secretary-General of the United Nations U Thant.
In an interview with Singapore's The Straits Times, Thant remarked that the threat of climate change made him pessimistic about the country's future.
It was chosen as one of the New York Times "Top Books of 2019" [26] and a For his efforts to preserve Yangon's built heritage, he was named by the Foreign Policy magazine as one of the "100 Leading Global Thinkers" in its annual list in 2013.
[28][29] He was voted 15th in Prospect magazine's annual online poll of the "World's Leading Thinkers" in 2014 in a list which feature many notable Indians including Kaushik Basu.
[33] He has a son, Thurayn Myint-U, born in 1999 to Hanna Styrmisdóttir, a granddaughter of Iceland's first female mayor, Hulda Jakobsdóttir.