Howard Markel, M.D., Ph.D.

Howard Markel, M.D., Ph.D. is the George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine, Professor of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases, Professor of Health Management and Policy, and Director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan.

Educated at the University of Michigan and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Markel is the author of Quarantine!: East European Jewish Immigrants and the New York City Epidemics of 1892 (Johns Hopkins, 1997), awarded the Arthur Viseltear Prize of the American Public Health Association for the best book on the history of public health published in the past five years; When Germs Travel: Six Epidemics That Have Invaded America Since 1900 and the New Fears They Have Unleashed (Pantheon, 2004); and the bestselling An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine (Pantheon, 2011).

Dr. Markel has received Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundation awards as well as the James Shannon Director's Award of the National Institutes of Health, the National Institutes of Health National Research Service Award, the Burroughs-Wellcome Fund 40th Anniversary History of Medicine Award, and an Inaugural Fellowship at the Center for Scholars and Writers of the New York Public Library. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences.

He has published many articles in popular and scholarly periodicals, from The New England Journal of Medicine, American Journal of Public Health, The Lancet, The American Scholar, and The Journal of the American Medical Association (for which he was a contributing writer from 2007 to 2014), to The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, Scientific American, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Detroit News, The New Republic, The International Herald Tribune, and The Wall Street Journal.

In the field of pediatrics, he is the author of The H. L. Mencken Baby Book; the popular textbook, The Portable Pediatrician; and The Practical Pediatrician: The A to Z Guide to Your Child's Health, Behavior and Safety (both with Frank A. Oski), which was named the "Best Health Book of the Year for 1996" by Child Magazine.

AN ANATOMY OF ADDICTION: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine (Alfred A. Knopf, 2011)

THE KELLOGGS: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek (Pantheon Books, 2017)

ORIGIN STORY: The Trials of Charles Darwin (W.W. Norton & Co., 2024)

THE SECRET OF LIFE: Rosalind Franklin, James Watson, Francis Crick, and the Discovery of DNA's Double Helix (W. W. Norton & Co., 2021)

WHEN GERMS TRAVEL: Six Epidemics That Have Invaded America Since 1900 and the New Fears They Have Unleashed (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004)