Who is Paul Kalanithi in When Breath Becomes Air?

Paul Kalanithi is the author of the memoir When Breath Becomes Air. Written while he was dying from cancer, the book chronicles Kalanithi’s life’s story and his reflections on life and death. Kalanithi grew up first in Bronxville, New York, and then in Kingsman, Arizona. He loved literature from an early age and pursued the subject at Stanford before deciding to study medical history at Cambridge. He then enrolled in medical school at Yale, where he met his wife, Lucy. The two of them moved to California for their residencies at Stanford, Kalanithi with the goal of becoming a neurosurgeon. He worked incredibly hard and became chief resident. But before his residency was over, at the age of thirty-six, Kalanithi received his diagnosis: he had Stage IV lung cancer, and it had spread throughout his body. Kalanithi was able to complete his residency—which required him to work one hundred hours a week—but on graduation day he was taken to the hospital, where he nearly died. He was released only a few days before the birth of his and Lucy’s daughter, Cady, who they had decided to have shortly after Kalanithi was first diagnosed. Kalanithi’s doctor told him his cancer had stabilized and that he had five “good years” left to live. Kalanithi began writing his memoir, which is filled with moving meditations on mortality, medicine, and meaning, as well as references to the books and authors he loved. His health declined during the last year of his life, and Paul Kalanithi eventually died peacefully in the hospital and was buried in the Santa Cruz Mountains. He was unable to finish the book before his death, but When Breath Becomes Air was nevertheless published posthumously to great acclaim.