Lewis Thomas



Lewis Thomas (November 25, 1913 – December 3, 1993) was a physician, poet, etymologist, essayist, administrator, educator, policy advisor, and researcher.

Thomas was born in Flushing, New York and attended Princeton University and Harvard Medical School. He became Dean of Yale Medical School and New York University School of Medicine, and President of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute. His formative years as an independent medical researcher were at Tulane University School of Medicine.

He was invited to write regular essays in the New England Journal of Medicine. Two other collections of essays (originally published in NEJM and elsewhere) were The Medusa and the Snail and Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony.

His autobiography, The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine Watcher, is a record of a century of medicine and the changes which occurred in it. He has also published a book on entomology entitled Et Cetera, Et Cetera, poems, and numerous scientific papers and poems.

Many of his essays discuss relationships among ideas or concepts using entomology as a starting point. Others concern the cultural implications of scientific discoveries and the growing awareness of ecology. In his essay on Mahler's Ninth Symphony, Thomas addresses the anxieties produced by the development of nuclear weapons. Thomas is often quoted, given his notably eclectic interests and superlative prose style.

Recognition
His collection essays, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a biology watcher (1974), shared National Book Awards in two categories, Arts and Letters and The Sciences. (He also won a Christopher Award for that book.)

In its first paperback edition, The Medusa and the Snail won the 1981 National Book Award for paperback Science. (From 1980 to 1983 in National Book Awards history there were dual hardcover and paperback awards in most categories, and multiple nonfiction subcategories. Most of the paperback award-winners were reprints, including this one.)

The Lewis Thomas Prize is awarded annually by The Rockefeller University to a scientist for artistic achievement.

Non-fiction

 * The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a biology watcher. Viking Press, 1974 ISBN 0-670-43442-6; Penguin Books, 1995 ISBN 0-14-004743-3
 * The Medusa and the Snail: More notes of a biology watcher, 1979, Viking Press, 1979 ISBN 0-670-46568-2; Penguin Books, 1995 ISBN 0-14-024319-4
 * Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony, 1983, Viking Press, 1983 ISBN 0-670-70390-7; Penguin Books, 1995 ISBN 0-14-024328-3
 * The Youngest Science: Notes of a medicine watcher. Viking Press, 1983. ISBN 0-670-79533-X; Penguin Books, 1995 ISBN 0-14-024327-5
 * Et Cetera, Et Cetera: Notes of a word-watcher. Little, Brown & Co., 1990 ISBN 0-316-84099-8, Welcome Rain, 2000 ISBN 1-56649-166-5
 * The Fragile Species. Scribner, 1992 ISBN 0-684-19420-1; Simon & Schuster, 1996 ISBN 0-684-84302-1