Sherwin B. Nuland

Sherwin B. Nuland
Born	December 8, 1930 (age 83) The Bronx, New York, USA
Nationality	American
Alma mater	New York University, YUSM
Known for	Professor of Surgery; Medical Ethicist; Historian of Medicine; Modern Philosopher
Scientific career
Fields	Surgeon, writer, educator
Institutions	Yale University School of Medicine (YUSM)

Sherwin Nuland (born December 8, 1930), born Sergey Borisovich Nudelmann is an American surgeon and writer who teaches bioethics, history of medicine, and medicine at the Yale University School of Medicine, and occasionally bioethics and history of medicine at Yale College. His 1994 book How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter was a New York Times Best Seller and won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, as well as being a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

In 2011 Nuland was awarded the Rhoads Gold Medal of the American Philosophical Society, for contributions to medicine.

Nuland has written non-academic articles for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New Republic, Time, and the New York Review of Books. Perhaps his greatest work, however, is his first-generation American autobiography of his own painful coming of age as a son of immigrants, "Lost in America: A Journey with My Father." He is a fellow of the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution.

Biography

Nuland was born in The Bronx, New York City, in December 1930 to immigrant Jewish parents Meyer and Abram (Boris) Nudelman. Although raised in a traditional Orthodox Jewish home, Sherwin now considers himself agnostic, but continues to attend synagogue.

Nuland is a graduate of New York University and Yale School of Medicine, where he obtained his M.D. degree and also completed a residency in surgery. He currently resides in Connecticut with his second wife Sarah. He has four children, two from each marriage. His daughter Victoria Nuland, a career foreign service officer and the former U.S. ambassador to NATO, has been the spokesperson for the Department of State since 2011.

In a 2001 TED talk, which was released in Oct 2007, Nuland spoke of his severe depression and obsessive thoughts in the early 1970s, probably caused by his difficult childhood and the dissolution of his first marriage. As drug therapy remained ineffective, a lobotomy was planned, but his treating resident suggested electroshock therapy instead, leading to ultimate recovery. Nuland is also one of the featured lecturers at One Day University.

In 2005, Nuland produced a series of lectures for the Teaching Company on the history of Western medicine titled Doctors: The History of Scientific Medicine Revealed Through Biography.

Books

• The Soul of Medicine (New York: Kaplan Publishing, 2009) ISBN 1-60714-055-1
• The Art of Aging: A Doctor's Prescription for Well-Being (New York: Random House, 2007) ISBN 1-4000-6477-5
• The Doctors' Plague: Germs, Childbed Fever and the Strange Story of Ignac Semmelweis (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003) ISBN 0-393-05299-0
• Doctors: The Biography of Medicine (New York: Knopf, 1988) ISBN 0-679-76009-1
• How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter (New York: Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 1994) ISBN 0-679-41461-4
• How We Live (New York: Vintage Books, 1998) [originally published as The Wisdom of the Body in 1997] ISBN 0-09-976761-9
• Leonardo Da Vinci (Penguin Lives) (New York: Viking, 2000) ISBN 0-670-89391-9
• Lost in America: A Journey with My Father (New York: Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 2003) ISBN 0-375-41294-8
• Maimonides (Jewish Encounters) (New York: Nextbook: Schocken, 2005) ISBN 0-8052-4200-7
• Medicine: The Art of Healing (New York : Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, Inc. : Distributed by Macmillan, 1992) ISBN 0-88363-292-6
• The Mysteries Within: A Surgeon Explores Myth, Medicine, and the Human Body (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000) ISBN 0-684-85486-4
• The Wisdom of the Body (New York: Knopf, 1997) ISBN 0-679-44407-6
• The Uncertain Art: Thoughts on a Life in Medicine (New York: Random House, 2008) ISBN 1-4000-6478-3

External links

• Sherwin B. Nuland tells his life story (video)
• Interview with Nuland concerning his book Maimonides
• Sherwin Nuland's 2001 TEDTalk, on the history of electroshock therapy and his personal experience with severe depression
• Sherwin Nuland vs. Aubrey de Grey in a clip from the documentary, HOW TO LIVE FOREVER
• In Depth interview with Nuland, October 2, 2005
• Sherwin B. Nuland at Library of Congress Authorities — with 18 catalog records