Gamal Abdel Nasser

Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918 to 1970) was an Egyptian army officer who led the Free Officers' revolution of 1952 and then served as the second president of Egypt from 1954 until his death. He rose in the Egyptian officer corps during the interwar and Second World War years, saw his first battlefield service as a staff officer in the 1948 war in Palestine, and held the rank of lieutenant colonel when the coup was planned. As head of state he nationalized the Suez Canal and came out of the Suez Crisis of 1956 with greatly increased standing in the Arab world. He then committed Egyptian forces to the North Yemen Civil War and presided over Egypt's defeat by Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967, after which he rebuilt the army and launched the War of Attrition before dying of a heart attack in September 1970.