Lewis Thomas, was born in Flushing, New York. The son of a surgeon, he graduated from Princeton University and in 1937 earned an M.D. from Harvard. In his distinguished medical career, he combined an active practice with teaching and administration. He served as dean of the medical schools of Yale and New York Universities and was chief executive officer of the Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York City at the time of his death.
His many scientific papers earned him membership in the National Academy of Sciences. But even as a medical student, Thomas displayed literary ambition and published a number of poems. In 1971, he began contributing a regular column, "Notes of a Biology Watcher," to the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. Some of these essays he collected and published in 1974 as The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher. These graceful essays found a sizable audience and won the National Book Award.
Subsequent essay collections include The Medusa and the Snail (1979) and Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony (1983). The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine Watcher (1983) describes the making of a doctor.
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