An Arrow's Arc

As a physician and renowned medical researcher, Carl Nathan has been at the forefront of discoveries in microbiology and immunology. In An Arrow’s Arc, he reflects on how his youthful experiences and passions moved him toward medicine and science, and how his five decades as a doctor and scientist have, in turn, shaped him.

As a child, Nathan struggled with severe asthma, and he saw breast cancer take his mother’s life during his senior year of college, on the very same day he was accepted to Harvard Medical School. These experiences, among others, fueled his abiding interest in medicine and his determined efforts to understand how the immune system duels with cancer and infectious diseases.

While a half-century dedicated to his patients and to biomedical research provided Dr. Nathan with a hard-won biological perspective on death’s role in life, he’s known since he was young that he could die at any time. He calls this a liberating thought, a gift, a call to action. Full of warmth and wisdom, An Arrow’s Arc is a beautiful reminder to all of us “that now is the time to love, to wonder, and to build.”

Carl Nathan, MD has been chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine for twenty-five years. He graduated from Harvard Medical School and trained in internal medicine and oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital, the National Cancer Institute, and Yale. He has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences. An Arrow's Arc is his first book for a general audience. He lives in Larchmont, New York.