HMS alumnus Siddhartha Mukherjee wins Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction

Siddhartha Mukherjee, M.D. '00, is honored for The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.

Joining a long and notable list of Harvard-affiliated physicians whose skill with words has enabled them to educate audiences far beyond their immediate circles of patients and colleagues, Siddhartha Mukherjee, M.D. '00, has been awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for a work of general nonfiction for his book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (Scribner). The Pulitzer judges praised the work as “an elegant inquiry, at once clinical and personal, into the long history of an insidious disease that, despite treatment breakthroughs, still bedevils medical science.”

Mukherjee is currently an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University; his lab "works on acute myeloid leukemia and pre-leukemic diseases, such as myelodysplasia (MDS)," seeking to “understand the pathogenesis of AML and MDS in order to develop novel drugs” against them.

 

Profiles from our archives of Atul Gawande and Jerome Groopman offer introductions to other Harvard-affiliated physician-authors. 

You might also like

The Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum reunites for a 50th anniversary tour around France.

He was Harvard’s quintessential people person.

The former economics concentrator brings his talent for crunching numbers to netminding.

Most popular

The longtime administrator, who retired from the post in 2018, returns as the College reorganizes. 

The wealth and fall of David and Jackie Siegel: a documentary

A documentary film turns a lens on the “1 percenters.”

The government also opens an investigation into financial aid awards to Chinese students.

Explore More From Current Issue

Graduates in caps and gowns celebrate joyfully, raising their hands in excitement.

Conan O’Brien headlines a star-studded cast

A woman with long, silver hair rests her chin on her hand, wearing a black top.

Author and Harvard Divinity School writer-in-residence Terry Tempest Williams finds beauty in the world around us.

Two figures stand before a large, colorful pixelated face against a yellow background.

Harvard scientists identify hundreds of genes under selective pressure.