Portrait of Atul Gawande

Birthday profile

Atul Gawande

Atul Gawande, American surgeon and journalist

Born
November 5, 1965
Age in 2026
61
Zodiac sign
Scorpio
Birth year
1965

About Atul Gawande

Atul Atmaram Gawande (born November 5, 1965) is an American surgeon, writer, and public health researcher. He practices general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. He is a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Samuel O. Thier Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. In public health, he was chairman of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation, and chairman of Lifebox, a nonprofit that works on reducing deaths in surgery globally. On 20 June 2018, Gawande was named CEO of healthcare venture Haven, owned by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JP Morgan Chase, and stepped down as CEO in May 2020, remaining as executive chairman while the organization sought a new CEO. He is the author of the books Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science; Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance; The Checklist Manifesto; and Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. In November 2020, he was named a member of President-elect Joe Biden's COVID-19 Advisory Board. On 17 December 2021, he was confirmed as Assistant Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, and was sworn in on 4 January 2022. He left this position on January 20, 2025, when Donald Trump began his second presidential term. Gawande later became a senior advisor in the Department of Health and Human Services after Clinton's first inauguration. Gawande published his first book, Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science, containing revised versions of 14 of his articles for Slate and The New Yorker, in 2002. Gawande founded the Lifebox charity with Pauline Philip.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Atul Gawande was born

Atul Gawande was born in 1965. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1965

  • #1 song"(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" – The Rolling Stones
  • Top movieThe Sound of Music
  • Top TV showBonanza
  • Best-selling bookDune – Frank Herbert

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentMuhammad Ali knocks out Sonny Liston with "phantom punch"
  • Top headlineUS sends combat troops to Vietnam
  • Technology milestoneFirst spacewalk (Alexei Leonov) and Gemini missions
  • Defining fadGo-go boots and miniskirts
  • Notable inventionAstroturf
  • World population3.34 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderLyndon B. Johnson
  • Sports championLos Angeles Dodgers (World Series)
  • Also wonBoston Celtics (NBA)
  • U.S. population194.3M

1965 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Atul Gawande's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19652026
Gas$0.31$3.45/gal
Average home$13,600$435,000
Average income$8,900$67,500
Minimum wage$1.25$7.25/hr (federal)
Movie ticket$1.01$11.95
Postage stamp$0.05$0.73
Population194.3M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Library of Congress. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.