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

Derek Bok donated his car for a good cause.

The play Spare Parts is a contemporary fable about the quest to live forever.

David Battat promotes alumni engagement.

Most popular

Social Media Use and Adult Depression

A survey reveals suprising links between social media use and depression in adults.

The Franklin Stove—A Historical Climate Change Adaptation

Historian Joyce E. Chaplin reinterprets an early era of invention, industrialization, and climate challenge

In 2004, a frenzy spread across Harvard Yard in days. Four billion users later, we are only just catching up.

Explore More From Current Issue

A woman with curly blonde hair sits casually against a stone wall, wearing a black top and jeans.

Chloe Chapin trains her Broadway costume designer’s eye on the history of men’s fashion.

A man in a suit speaks at a podium.

David Battat promotes alumni engagement.

A woman with long, wavy hair wearing a white suit, seated in a bright, modern room.

The Harvard graduate’s roundtable talk show touches on hot button issues from religion to sex.