JOHN Kerry was born on December 11, 1943 at Fitzsimmons Military Hospital in Denver, Colorado, where his father, Richard, who had volunteered to fly DC-3s in the Army Air Corps in World War Two, was recovering from a bout with tuberculosis.

Not long after his birth, his family returned home to Massachusetts. A graduate of Yale University, John Kerry entered the Navy after graduation, becoming a Swift Boat officer, serving on a gunboat in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam.

He received a Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V, and three awards of the Purple Heart for his service in combat. By the time Senator Kerry returned home from Vietnam, he felt compelled to question decisions he believed were being made to protect those in positions of authority in Washington at the expense of the soldiers carrying on the fighting in Vietnam.

Kerry was a co-founder of the Vietnam Veterans of America and became a spokeman for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War ? correspondent Morley Safer would describe him as "a veteran whose articulate call to reason rather than anarchy seemed to bridge the call between the Abbie Hoffmans of the world and (Vice-President Spiro) Agnew's so-called 'Silent Majority'."

In April, 1971, in testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he asked the question of his fellow citizens: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

Sen. Claiborne Pell, a Rhode Island Democrat, thanked Kerry, then aged only 27, for testifying before the committee, expressing his hope that Kerry "might one day be a colleague in this body".

Fourteen years later, John Kerry would have the opportunity to fulfil those hopes ? serving side by side with Sen. Pell as a Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But in the intervening years, he found different ways to fight for those things in which he believed.

Time and again, Kerry fought to hold the political system accountable and to do what he believed was right. As a top prosecutor in Middlesex County, Massachusetts' Kerry took on organised crime and put the Number Two mob boss in New England behind bars. He modernised the District Attorney's office, creating an innovative rape crisis crime unit, and as a lawyer in private practice he worked long and hard to prove the innocence of a man wrongly given a life sentence for a murder he did not commit.

In 1984, after winning election as Lieutenant Governor in 1982, Kerry ran and was elected to serve in the US Senate, running and winning a successful Senate race and defeating a Republican opponent buoyed by President Ronald Reagan's re-election coat-tails.

Like his predecessor, the late Paul Tsongas, Kerry came to the Senate with a reputation for independence ? and reinforced it by making tough choices on difficult issues: breaking with many in his own party to support Gramm-Rudman Deficit Reduction legislation; taking on corporate welfare and government waste; pushing for campaign finance reform; holding Oliver North accountable and exposing the fraud and abuse at the heart of the Bank of Credit & Commerce International scandal; working with Republican Senator John McCain in the search for the truth about Vietnam veterans declared Prisoners of War/Missing In Action; and insisting on accountability, investment, and excellence in public education.

Sen. Kerry was re-elected in 1990, and again in 1996, defeating the popular Republican Governor William Weld in the most closely watched Senate race in the US. Now serving his fourth term, Kerry has worked to reform public education, address children's issues, strengthen the American economy and encourage the growth of the high-tech New Economy, protect the environment, and advance US foreign policy interests around the globe.

John Kerry is married to Teresa Heinz. He has two daughters, Alexandra and Vanessa. Teresa Heinz has three sons, John, Andre, and Christopher. Senator Kerry lives in Boston.

His Presidential campaign all but written off for dead just a month ago when then front-runner Howard Dean appeared to have an insurmountable lead in the polls heading into the Democratic primaries, Sen. Kerry's decisive victory in the Iowa caucuses has re-energised his supporter base ? and the flow of campaign contributions.

"Flushed from strong showings in the Iowa caucuses, Senator John Kerry on Tuesday joined in a conference call with 250 of his largest fund-raisers," reported on Wednesday. "Aides to Mr. Kerry said the Iowa results had pumped life into his wheezing fund-raising."

Mr. Kerry saw contributions slow substantially in recent months as Howard Dean's momentum and Internet-based, fund-raising network made him the financial leader. Fund-raisers and campaign strategists say Iowa shifted that momentum for the moment . . .

"It's been tough to raise money, because people want to see a wind at your back," said Mr. Kerry's campaign treasurer, Bob Farmer, US Consul General in Bermuda under the Bill Clinton Presidency. "Suddenly, we've got a typhoon at our back, and it's exciting.

"Moving quickly to revitalise his traditional fund-raising network, Mr. Kerry and his financial aides reached out to major fund-raisers, ran phone banks in several states and prepared a mailing," Mr. Farmer said.