As former New York City's Commissioner of Health, Thomas Frieden's part of the reason why you can't light up in a bar and why cigarettes cost over $7.50 a pack. Subsequently, he became the Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

The baby-faced Brooklynite earned his medical degree from Columbia and specialized in infectious diseases at Yale before starting a career in the city's Department of Health in 1990. Two years later, he became head of the city's Bureau of Tuberculosis Control, where he was charged with reducing the incidence of TB in the city. He later left the city's employ and in 1997 moved to India, under the auspices of the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization to help stop the spread of TB in India. He returned to New York in 2002 after Mayor Bloomberg gave him the city's top health post.

When Bloomberg offered Friedan the job, he agreed on the condition that he'd have the mayor's backing to make people "angry." True to his word, Frieden has infuriated plenty of citizens, most prominently by proposing an increase in cigarette taxes, and pushing for the citywide indoor smoking ban that went into effect in 2003. Friedan has also frequently butted heads with the city's restaurateurs, stumping for a ban on trans fats, putting restaurant inspection scores online, and stepping up the frequency and rigorousness of restaurant inspections. His push to expand the city's free condoms program, including a much-hyped redesign of the packages using the same fonts as the subway system, met with inevitable resistance from the city's Catholic leaders. After six years in the hot seat, Frieden has since moved onward and upward to Washington as the Director of the less-controversial CDC and as an Administrator of ATSDR. [Image via Getty]