Portrait of Lewis Thomas

Birthday profile

Lewis Thomas

Lewis Thomas, American physician, etymologist, and educator (died 1993)

Born
November 25, 1913
Died
December 3, 1993
Zodiac sign
Sagittarius
Birth year
1913

About Lewis Thomas

Lewis Thomas (November 25, 1913 – December 3, 1993) was an American physician, poet, etymologist, essayist, administrator, educator, policy advisor, and biologist. He was a longtime contributor to The New England Journal of Medicine, and his essays were collected in several books. He received National Book Award in Arts and Letters and The Sciences for The Lives of a Cell. One collection of those essays, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974), won annual National Book Awards in two categories, Arts and Letters and The Sciences (both awards were split). (He also won a Christopher.

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

The world when Lewis Thomas was born

Lewis Thomas was born in 1913. 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 1913

  • Best-selling book"The Inside of the Cup" – Winston Churchill

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentJim Thorpe stripped of Olympic titles over amateurism rules
  • Top headline16th Amendment allows federal income tax
  • Technology milestoneFord assembly line begins — revolutionizes manufacturing
  • World population~1.73B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderWoodrow Wilson
  • U.S. population96.0M

1913 versus 2026

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

Measure19132026
Postage stamp$0.02$0.73
Population96.0M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. 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.