Printable Biography of Sherwin Nuland

Physician, surgeon, teacher, medical historian and best-selling author, Dr. Sherwin Nuland continues to enlighten audiences with his research, scholarship, philosophy and vision on the future of medicine.

Dr. Nuland has been teaching at Yale School of Medicine with the title of Clinical Professor of Surgery and serves on the faculty of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies. His most important and personally fulfilling work was spent administering care to 10,000 men and women who became his patients over the course of three decades. In recognition of his contributions to those men and women, he was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

A prolific medical writer and author, Dr. Nuland continually writes feature pieces for "The New Yorker," "Time," "Life," "National Geographic," "Discover," "The New Republic," "New York Review of Books," "New York Times," "Boston Globe," "The Los Angeles Times" and several other periodicals for all readers. He writes a regular column for "The American Scholar," serves as Literary Editor for "Connecticut Medicine," and is Chairman of the Board of Managers of the "Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences."

For over twenty years, Dr. Nuland has closely followed the emerging field of biomedical ethics, undertaking a wide-ranging study of all the relevant preoccupations and relating them to the rapidly changing world of medicine. "The Mysteries Within: The Surgeon Reflects on Medical Myths" is a study and exploration of the way early societies, influenced by local myth, religion and superstition, viewed our internal organs. It is the basis for a television documentary presented on the Discovery Health Channel in August 2002.

Dr. Nuland's monumentally successful book, "How We Die," won the National Book Award and was a finalist for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize and Book Critics Circle Award. A reflection on the modern way of death, "How We Die" was on "The New York Times" bestseller list for 34 weeks, with more than a half million copies sold in countries throughout the world having been translated into 20 languages. In seeking to demystify the process of dying for the larger public, Dr. Nuland's How We Die really stands as a reminder of how we are to live.

His most recent book, "The Doctors' Plague: Germs, Childbed Fever, and the Strange Story of Ignac Semmelweis" documents how one doctor discovered the truth behind high mortality rates in Vienna during the mid 1800's: medical doctors who went straight from dissecting cadavers to delivering babies, without washing their hands. The topic of preventing disease and illness is very pertinent today, especially in the wake of recent flu and SARS epidemics. Previous books include "Lost In America: A Journey With My Father," a touching memoir about the challenges he faced growing up poor in the Bronx with an immigrant father, and "Leonardo Da Vinci," a book completing Dr. Nuland's twenty-two year quest to understand an unlettered man who was a painter, architect, engineer, philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. Dr. Nuland is also the author of the "National Geographic" publication, "Incredible Voyage: Exploring the Human Body", as well as "Medicine: The Art of Healing," a work in which the history of medicine is seen through the history of art.