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Elisabeth Rosenthal
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Elisabeth Rosenthal is a 1974 graduate of Scarsdale High School. She especially enjoyed her history classes, and credits Werner Feig’s demands forbetter crafted writing as the keys to her successful career as a journalist. As an undergraduate at Stanford University she did exceptionally well in a variety of subjects including the humanities and the sciences. Her enjoyment of chemistry and biology led directly to her decision to attend medical school and she moved back east to get an M.D. from Harvard University. After graduation, Ms. Rosenthal went to work in a local emergency room. At the same time, she was writing thoughtful and well-received articles on a variety of subjects forThe New York Times.
In time, Ms. Rosenthal began to question the logic of having two full time jobs and a family. She resigned from the hospital in 1994, and four years later she was assigned to the China desk by The New York Times. From that perspective she wrote long, detailed and important essays on SARS and AIDS, and was nominated fora Pulitzer Prize.
Now, ten years later, Ms. Rosenthal has returned to her home in New York City. Her new area of interest focuses on global/environmental issues. Now her writing is drawing and educating readers a generation younger than those who learned from her on medicine and China.