Michael Egnor

Dr. Michael R. Egnor is an American pediatric neurosurgeon whose career in neurological medicine spans more than four decades. Egnor is professor of neurosurgery and pediatrics at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, where he received his medical degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University and has served on the faculty since 1991. He serves as the neurosurgery residency director and has held roles as director of pediatric neurosurgery and vice chairman of neurosurgery at Stony Brook Medicine. His clinical practice includes patients with Arnold Chiari deformity, hydrocephalus, craniosynostosis, brain tumors, spina bifida, and severe pediatric head trauma.

Egnor is recognized for his research on hydrocephalus and serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Hydrocephalus Association. In addition to his neurosurgical practice, he directs research on intracranial dynamics, cerebral blood flow, and hydrocephalus, and has lectured at scientific meetings internationally. His work has been published in medical journals including Journal of Neurosurgery and Cerebrospinal Fluid Research. Egnor's surgical expertise received public attention following a high-profile case involving a young boy with severe head trauma, which was reported in Newsday, Good Morning America, and New York Magazine.

Egnor is active in discussions at the intersection of neuroscience, philosophy, and faith. He has written about his transition from a materialist perspective as a medical student to questioning conventional views on consciousness after years of neurosurgical practice. Egnor argues that clinical observations, studies of brain seizures, split-brain patients, and near-death experiences support philosophical dualism, drawing on the work of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. He has published and lectured extensively on Thomistic philosophy, philosophy of mind, neuroscience, evolution, and intelligent design.

Egnor is a fellow at Discovery Institute, contributing to debates about intelligence, consciousness, and the origins of life. He is a signatory to the Discovery Institute intelligent design campaigns "A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism" and "Physicians and Surgeons who Dissent from Darwinism." He appeared in the documentary "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" and has participated in public debates on topics such as the existence of God and the nature of the human mind. Egnor also hosts the "Mind Matters News" podcast, which features interviews with experts in computing, engineering, science, and philosophy, exploring natural and artificial intelligence.

Egnor is co-author of the book "The Immortal Mind: A Neurosurgeon's Case for the Existence of the Soul" with Denyse O'Leary, published by Worthy. The book examines scientific and philosophical evidence for the soul, arguing that the human mind possesses faculties such as consciousness, free will, rational thought, and self-awareness that cannot be reduced to brain activity alone. Drawing on his experience from thousands of brain operations, Egnor presents the view that human beings are spiritual as well as physical, and that scientific inquiry is compatible with the inference to God's existence and the reality of the human soul.