Science Commentator

On November 25, 1913, American physician, researcher, and essayist Lewis Thomas was born. A man of intriguing insights, he added to his wisdom from views, opinions, and related experiences in science and medicine at Princeton, Harvard, and Tulane. He served as Dean of Yale Medical School, New York University School of Medicine, and President and CEO of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

A fluent and charming communicator, Thomas began a parallel career as an essayist for the New England Journal Of Medicine. He chose a collection from these essays and published them as The Lives of a Cell; notes of a biology watcher. Philosophical, chatty, and quietly good-humoured, Thomas revealed his great reach of interdisciplinary knowledge to relate his view of Earth and its whole organization of nature as a sum of parts working together much like a cellular organism. For this book, he received the National Book Award… in two categories – The Arts & Letters and The Sciences!

As Thomas continued his work in medicine, he continued to write essays. He published four more non-fiction titles, including the award-winning The Medusa and the Snail.

The Rockefeller University awards the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science to a writer whose special voice and vision bridge Science and the Humanities.

B Bondar / Real World Content Advantage