Atul Gawande

Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, is a surgeon, writer, and public health researcher.

Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, is a surgeon, writer, and public health researcher. He practices general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and is professor in both the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Department of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. He is Executive Director of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation, and Chairman of Lifebox, a nonprofit organization making surgery safer globally.Atul has been a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine since 1998 and has written three New York Times bestsellers: "Complications," a finalist for the National Book Award in 2002; "Better," one of the 10 best books of 2007 by Amazon.com; and "The Checklist Manifesto." He has won two National Magazine Awards, AcademyHealth’s Impact Award for highest research impact on healthcare, a MacArthur Fellowship, and the Lewis Thomas Award for writing about science. His latest book is "Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End."


Fisherman are silhouetted against the rising sun in the waters of the Ganges river.

Spreading my father’s ashes on the Ganges felt like a link across the globe and across generations

Health

“What I felt on the Ganges,” says Atul Gawande, the surgeon and author of Being Mortal, “was he had brought us there and connected himself to all that was important to him, but he was connecting us as well.”

Facing Mortality, As a Doctor