Gerald Weissmann is Professor of Medicine and Director of the Biotechnology Study Center at the New York University School of Medicine. After an AB at Columbia University, 1950, and an MD at NYU School of Medicine, 1954, he served residencies at Mt. Sinai and Bellevue Hospitals. He then pursued postdoctoral research in biochemistry at NYU (Severo Ochoa) and in cell biology at Cambridge University (Dame Honor Fell). He is best known for having studied the cell biology of leukocyte activation (via C5a), the role of salicylates and corticosteroids in cell signalling and adhesion [MAP kinases, NfkB] and for his co-discovery and naming of liposomes (1965). Dr. Weissmann has received the Lila Gruber Award for Cancer Research, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Allesandro Robecchi and Paul Klemperer awards for inflammation research, and the Distinguished Investigator Award of the American College of Rheumatology. He is a Master and past president of the American College of Rheumatology and a past president of the Harvey Society, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the New York Academy of Medicine. He is a trustee of the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA and is on the Advisory Board of the Ellison Medical Foundation. A member of PEN, his essays and reviews of cultural history have been published in The New Republic, The London Review of Books and The New York Times Book Review and have been collected in six volumes, from The Woods Hole Cantata (1985) to Darwin's Audubon (1998). He was a founder (with EC Whitehead) and a director of The Liposome Company, Inc. (LIPO. NASDAQ, Princeton) from 1982-2000.

On alternate weeks, Dr. Weissmann writes a column for the Praxis Post called This Week.