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Anthony Fauci

American immunologist (born 1940)

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Anthony Fauci in 2023 by Christopher Michel
Christopher Michel · CC BY-SA 4.0

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Through Classics, Switzerland and World War II

Fauci graduated from the College of the Holy Cross, where he studied classics, and earned his Doctor of Medicine from Cornell University. As a physician at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Fauci served in the American public health sector for more than fifty years and has acted as an advisor to every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan. During his time as NIAID director, he was known for his contributions to HIV/AIDS research and other immunodeficiency diseases. He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2005 for pioneering HIV pathogenesis research and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008 for his work on PEPFAR, an AIDS relief program, by President George W. Bush.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci served under President Donald Trump as one of the lead members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. His advice was frequently contradicted by Trump, and Trump's supporters alleged that Fauci was trying to politically undermine Trump's run for re-election in 2020. Under the Biden administration, Fauci served as one of the lead members of the White House COVID-19 Response Team and as Biden's chief medical advisor, during which time his advice was generally supported. On Biden's last full day in office, Fauci was issued a preemptive pardon covering potential federal offenses between January 1, 2014, and January 19, 2025.

Early life and education

Fauci was born on December 24, 1940, in Brooklyn Hospital in Downtown Brooklyn, New York City. His father, Stephen, was a pharmacist who graduated from Columbia University and owned a pharmacy in Dyker Heights. His mother, Eugenia Abys, worked at a dry cleaner. On his father's side, Fauci was descended from immigrants from Sciacca, Sicily. His maternal grandparents were from Naples, Italy. His maternal grandmother, Raffaella Trematerra, was a seamstress, and his maternal grandfather, Giovanni Abys, was a Swiss-born landscape and portrait artist noted for his magazine illustrations in Italy.

As a child, Fauci, together with his mother and older sister, worked at the register of his father's pharmacy. The pharmacy was directly beneath the family apartment, which had previously been in the Bensonhurst neighborhood. In his youth, Fauci developed a fascination with World War II. He was raised Catholic. He attended Regis High School, a competitive Jesuit school in Manhattan's Upper East Side, where he captained the school's basketball team despite standing only 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m) tall. He decided mid-way through high school to become a physician, graduating in 1958.

After high school, Fauci enrolled at the College of the Holy Cross, which he recalled as having "an extraordinary reputation for premedical work". He studied classical Greek there and worked in a construction gang during the summers. As an undergraduate at Holy Cross, his courses focused on philosophy, French, Greek, and Latin. He graduated from Holy Cross in 1962 with a Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, in classics and pre-med studies, then attended medical school at Cornell University, where he graduated first in his class with a Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) from the Cornell Medical College in 1966. At Cornell, he focused on adult internal medicine, mainly infectious diseases and the immune system. Fauci then did an internship and residency in internal medicine at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center (now Weill Cornell Medical Center).

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