Lewis Thomas (November 25, 1913 - December 3, 1993) was a physician, poet, etymologist, essayist, administrator, educator, policy advisor, and researcher. November 25 is the 329th (in leap years the 330th) day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1913 (MCMXIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday. ... December 3 is the 337th (in leap years the 338th) day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1993 (MCMXCIII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and marked the Beginning of the International Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (1993-2003). ... Headline text --67. ...

Thomas was born in Flushing, New York and attended Princeton University and Harvard Medical School. He became Dean of Yale Medical School and New York University School of Medicine, and President of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute. Flushing is a section of the borough of Queens in New York City, New York. ... Princeton University is a coeducational private university located in Princeton, New Jersey. ... Shield of Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is one of the graduate schools of Harvard University. ... The Yale School of Medicine is a private medical school located in New Haven, Connecticut. ... The New York University School of Medicine was founded in 1841, ten years after the New York Universitys founding, as the University Medical College. ... The Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York is a treatment and research institution founded in 1884 as the New York Cancer Hospital. ...

He was invited to write regular essays in the New England Journal of Medicine, and won a National Book Award for the 1974 collection of those essays, The Lives of a Cell. He also won a Christopher Award for this book. Two other collections of essays (from NEJM and other sources) are The Medusa and the Snail and Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony. His autobiography, The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine Watcher is a record of a century of medicine and the changes which occurred in it. He also published a book on etymology entitled Et Cetera, Et Cetera, poems, and numerous scientific papers. The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) is a peer-reviewed medical journal published by the Massachusetts Medical Society with the highest impact factor for a general medical journal. ... The National Book Award is one of the most important literary prizes in the United States, presented annually for the best books by living U.S. citizens published in the U.S. The awards have been presented since 1950 in at least one category, and are presently awarded in each... The Symphony No. ... Medicine is the branch of health science and the sector of public life concerned with maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, treatment and possible prevention of disease and injury. ...

Many of his essays discuss relationships among ideas or concepts using etymology as a starting point. Others concern the cultural implications of scientific discoveries and the growing awareness of ecology. In his essay on Mahler's Ninth Symphony, Thomas addresses the anxieties produced by the development of nuclear weapons. Thomas is noted for his eclectic interests and superlative prose style and is often quoted. Etymology is the study of the origins of words. ... Ernst Haeckel coined the term oekologie in 1866. ... A nuclear fireball lights up the night in a United States nuclear test. ...

The Lewis Thomas Prize is awarded annually by The Rockefeller University to a scientist for artistic achievement. This article lacks information on the subject matters importance. ... Rockefeller University is a private university focusing primarily on graduate education and research in the biomedical fields, located between 63rd and 68th street on York Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan island in New York City, New York. ...

Parallels to Gaia Theory

In the book The Lives of a Cell, Thomas makes an observation very similar to James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis: James Lovelock in front of a statue of Gaia in 2000 Dr James Ephraim Lovelock CH CBE FRS, (born July 26, 1919) is an independent scientist, author, researcher and environmentalist who lives in Cornwall, in the south west of Great Britain. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

I have been trying to think of the earth as a kind of organism, but it is no go. I cannot think of it this way. It is too big, too complex, with too many working parts lacking visible connections. The other night, driving through a hilly, wooded part of southern New England, I wondered about this. If not like an organism, what is it like, what is it most like? Then, satisfactorily for that moment, it came to me: it is most like a single cell.

Books

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Lewis Thomas

• The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher, 1974, Viking Press: ISBN 0-670-43442-6, Penguin Books, 1995 reprint: ISBN 0-14-004743-3
• The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher, 1979, Viking Press: ISBN 0-670-46568-2, Penguin Books, 1995 reprint: ISBN 0-14-024319-4
• Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony, 1983, Viking Press: ISBN 0-670-70390-7, Penguin Books, 1995 reprint: ISBN 0-14-024328-3
• The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine-Watcher, 1983, Viking: ISBN 0-670-79533-X, Penguin Books, 1995 reprint: ISBN 0-14-024327-5
• The Fragile Species, 1992, Scribner, ISBN 0-684-19420-1, Simon & Schuster, 1996 paperback: ISBN 0-684-84302-1
• Et Cetera, Et Cetera: Notes of a Word-Watcher, 1990. Little Brown & Co ISBN 0-316-84099-8, Welcome Rain, 2000 ISBN 1-56649-166-5