Lewis Thomas Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Lewis Thomas

Few twentieth-century physicians bridged the gap between science and literature as well as Lewis Thomas, who spent most of his illustrious medical career as a researcher and administrator. The short essays he began writing "for fun" in 1971 established him as a serious author who combined his knowledge and insights into science, especially microbiology and immunology, with meditative reflections on nature and the human body in a style widely recognized as clear, graceful, and witty.

Lewis Thomas was born on 25 November 1913 in Flushing, New York, to Joseph Simon Thomas, a family physician and surgeon, and Grace Emma Peck Thomas, a nurse. Lewis Thomas was fascinated by his father's profession, and it became a baseline for his later understanding of the dramatic changes--not always good ones in his opinion--in the practice of medicine during the twentieth century. At fifteen he entered Princeton University, where he was an average student. While there he developed an interest in poetry and literary humor, writing much "good bad verse," as he described it in The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine-Watcher (1983), for The Princeton Tiger.

Read the rest of this Biography with our Lewis Thomas Access Pass.