Lewis Thomas ’33

WITH LHE DEATH OF LEW THOMAS Dec. 3, 1993, the class lost its most illustrious member. Lew prepared at McBurney School. In college, he was on THE TIGER and a member of Key and Seal.

Lew went to Harvard Medical School and interned at Boston City Hospital. During WWII, he was a It. commander in the navy, assigned to the Rockefeller Institute, and later to duty in the Pacific. After the war, he taught at Johns Hopkins, Tulane, and the Univ. of Minnesota medical schools. He was dean of the med schools at Yale and N.Y.U. He worked at the Rockefeller Institute, and was president of the SloanKettering Cancer Institute.

Lew started writing while in medical school. Throughout his life he wrote essays, mainly on scientific or medical subjects. Some were collected into books that became bestsellers, e.g., LIVES OF A CELL and THE MEDUSA AND THE SNAIL. He was called "one of the best writers of short essays in English."

Among many awards, Lew received the Woodrow Wilson Award in 1980. The Lewis Thomas Biochemistry Laboratory at Princeton keeps his name alive for future generations.

In 1941, Lew married Beryl Dawson in N.Y.C. She survives, as do their children, Abigail, Judith Mira y Lopez, and Eliza; Five grandchildren; and two greatgrandchildren. The class extends its deep sympathy to the family.

The Class of 1933