A Brief Biography of Lewis Thomas
A Noteworthy Physician, Etymologist, Writer, and Policy Maker
Jul 13, 2009
Born in 1913, Lewis Thomas started his medical career as a boy, going to house calls with his father, a physician, and then went on to college at the age of 15 at Princeton. He accumulated a stellar resume of job credits at top universities and research centers all over the United States, and his job titles include physician, scientist, professor, appointed policy maker, etymologist, Naval Officer, and author.
In his obituary on December 4, 1993, Marilyn Berger wrote that he was awarded over 20 honorary degrees in both literature and medicine. Berger also hailed his “indefatigable” drive to finance basic biology research, “which he saw as the key to progress in medicine.” But Thomas, ever the etymologist, had a more simplistic approach to his titles, and quite happy with his “Occam’s Razor” style to everything he pursued, was a self-proclaimed Biology Watcher, Medicine Watcher, and Word Watcher.
He is revered by biologists, physicians, patients, readers, and writers worldwide for his achievements and contributions to both science and writing. But regardless of one’s acquaintance with Thomas, he has undoubtedly touched each and every one of us, if only with his medical breakthroughs alone.
Contributions to Medical Sciences
On new discoveries in research, Thomas once said: “Lots of [unexpected discoveries are] due to mistakes and stupidity, but [they] could open a new line of inquiry. Something really good turns up once in a hundred times, but it makes the whole day worthwhile.”
Despite poor grades and a dedication to partying at Princeton, Thomas went on to Harvard at the advent of the Depression, where he became more serious about his career as the state of the economy and the country plummeted. Taken under the wing and financial benevolence of his father’s friend, Hans Zinsser, who was the professor of bacteriology, Thomas entered Harvard Medical School at the age of 19, in the year 1933. He graduated cum laude in 1937, and entered his internship at the Harvard Medical Service of the Boston City hospital.
When World War II began, Dr. Thomas reported for duty to the Naval Research Unit at the Hospital of the Rockefeller Institute, and headed to Guam to study Japanese B encephalitis, a disease closely related to West Nile Virus, in Okinawa. He and his colleague, Dr. Horace Hodes, quickly identified the source of the outbreak to be horse blood. He wrote of his time in Guam, “I had the guiltiest of wars, doing under orders one thing after another that I liked doing.” When the war ended seven months later, Thomas used his findings to initiate his relentless pursuit of the pathogenesis of rheumatic fever.
After leaving the service, Thomas became an active innovator in research, and made numerous groundbreaking discoveries in the field of the pathology of the immune system, a discipline in which he was touted a pioneer of. To put his discoveries in perspective, anybody who has sought treatments for allergies, Schwartzmann Phenomenon, cancer, HIV, arthritis, meningitis, or other inflammatory disorders, has benefited from the labors of Thomas’ “immune surveillance.”
Thomas the Writer and Biology Watcher
Thomas’ deft skill for breaking down concepts, and making them interesting and fully interactive through his engaging prose, has set him far above, and unrivaled by, many textbook writers. His career as a writer began without pay and without editing, but biologists and casual readers alike quickly took notice of his bimonthly column. Elisabeth Sifton, an editor at Viking Press at the time, collected the essays and compiled the book, Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher, which became a bestseller, garnered a National Book Award, and was the first of many published books he wrote.
Not restricted to ingenuity and innovation in the lab, Thomas transferred his knowledge of scientific etymology to words. Thomas is said by many to have bridged the gap between the scientists who work in the drafty cubicles of science labs to the people who don’t dare walk into them. He dug to the very roots of both diseases and words, and then built upon the mysteries until found a solid “in-between,” a place for them to unite.
Thomas’ Legacy
Dr. Lewis Thomas’ legacy in science and in writing will live on through eternity, as science and words continue to evolve. Rockefeller University created an annual award in his honor, called simply and appropriately, The Lewis Thomas Prize, which honors “the rare individual who bridges the worlds of science and the humanities—whose voice and vision can tell us about science’s aesthetic and philosophical dimensions, providing not merely new information but cause for reflection, even revelation”.
For more information, please read Lewis Thomas, by Ann Woodlief
