Abraham Verghese Biography
Abraham Verghese is the Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor and Vice Chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the Stanford School of Medicine. He is also a best-selling author and a physician with a reputation for his focus on healing in an era where technology often overwhelms the human side of medicine. His most popular books are; Cutting for Stone, The Covenant of Water, My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story, The Tennis Partner, and A Life in Medicine: A Literary Anthology.
Abraham Verghese Age
Verghese is 68 years old as of 2023. He was born on May 30, 1955, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Abraham Verghese Height
Going by his physical appearance, Verghese’s height stands at 5 feet 8 inches tall.
Abraham Verghese Nationality
He holds American nationality.
Abraham Verghese Education
While in Ethiopia where Verghese’s parents were recruited by Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie as teachers, Verghese began his medical studies at Haile Selassie the First University. Three years into his studies, his education was interrupted when Selassie was deposed in 1974. Amid civil unrest, Verghese left the country and later completed his medical studies at Madras Medical College and was awarded a Bachelor of Medicine degree from Madras University in 1979. He also studied at the Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1991. Verghese has received a total of five honorary degrees.
Abraham Verghese Parents
Abraham is the son of Mariam Abraham and George Verghese. His parents were Indians from Kerala who were recruited by Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie as schoolteachers. They arrived in the misty mountain empire of Ethiopia in 1951 within two weeks of each other.
The second of three sons, Abraham grew up near Addis Ababa and began his medical training there. When the emperor was deposed, he briefly joined his parents who had moved to the United States because of the war. His elder brother, George Verghese, is an engineering professor at MIT and his younger brother, Phil Verghese, is a Staff Software Engineer at Google.
Abraham Verghese Wife
Is Abraham Verghese married? Yes, Abraham is married to Sylvia Verghese. Abraham met his wife Sylvia in an El Paso AIDS clinic where she was volunteering. The couple is blessed with a son named Tristan Verghese. Previously, Abraham was married to Dr. Ranjana Sreedhar, a pediatrician, and they were blessed with two sons, Steven Verghese and Jacob Verghese. The ex-couple separated in 1991.
Abraham Verghese Career
Who is Abraham Verghese? Verghese is Professor and Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor, and Vice Chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the School of Medicine at Stanford University. He is also a best-selling author and a physician with a reputation for his focus on healing in an era where technology often overwhelms the human side of medicine. He received the Heinz Award in 2014 and was awarded the National Humanities Medal, presented by President Barack Obama, in 2015.
Abraham Verghese Books
Verghese’s early years as an orderly, his care of terminal AIDS patients, and the insights he gained from the deep relationships he formed and the suffering he witnessed were transformative. Though he wrote a seminal scientific paper, he felt the sometimes cold and unimaginative language of science could not begin to capture the nature of the experience for patients and families, nor did it convey his own feelings as he witnessed their journeys. These were the cumulative experiences around which his first book, My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story (1994), is centered.
After leaving Iowa, Verghese became professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center in El Paso, Texas, where he lived for the next 11 years. In El Paso, he finished his first book, chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by TIME and later filmed for Showtime as My Own Country, directed by Mira Nair and starring Naveen Andrews. His second best-selling book, The Tennis Partner: A Story of Friendship and Loss (1997), explored his friend and frequent tennis partner’s losing struggle with addiction. The Tennis Partner was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
Speaking about his novel, Cutting for Stone, he also addressed the issue: “I wanted the reader to see how entering medicine was a passionate quest, a romantic pursuit, a spiritual calling, a privileged yet hazardous undertaking. It’s a view of medicine I don’t think too many young people see in the West because, frankly, in the sterile hallways of modern medical-industrial complexes, where physicians and nurses are hunkered down behind computer monitors, and patients are whisked off here and there for all manner of tests, that side of medicine gets lost.”
His other books include; The Covenant of Water and A Life in Medicine: A Literary Anthology. The Covenant of Water was published in May 2023 by Grove Atlantic, becoming an Oprah’s Book Club pick.
Abraham Verghese Net Worth
He has an estimated net worth of $5 million as of 2023.
