Professor Alfred I. Tauber retired from Boston University in 2010 as Zoltan Kohn Professor emeritus of Medicine, Professor emeritus of Philosophy, and Director emeritus of the Center for Philosophy and History of Science. Having received his B.S. and M.D. degrees from Tufts University, he completed his clinical and research training at the University of Washington, New England Medical Center and the Harvard Medical School affiliate, Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He became Chief of the Hematology and Oncology Services at the Boston City Hospital in 1982 and practiced clinical medicine until 2003. At Boston University, he actively directed a research laboratory focused on the biochemistry of the acute inflammatory response, with studies ranging from free radical chemistry to activation mechanisms of immune cells. He continues collaborative research on complex systems at Tel Aviv University.

Aside from over 125 research publications in immunology, Dr. Tauber has published extensively on 19th and 20th century biomedicine, contemporary science studies, and ethics. He is the author of Requiem for the Ego: Freud and the Origins of Postmodernism (Stanford 2013), Freud, the Reluctant Philosopher (Princeton 2010), Science and the Quest for Meaning (Baylor 2009), Patient Autonomy and the Ethics of Responsibility (MIT 2005), Henry David Thoreau and the Moral Agency of Knowing (California 2001), Confessions of a Medicine Man, (MIT 1999), and The Immune Self, Theory or Metaphor? (Cambridge, 1994). In addition, he has co-authored Metchnikoff and the Origins of Immunology (Oxford, 1991) and The Generation of Diversity, Clonal Selection Theory and the Rise of Molecular Immunology (Harvard, 1997). He has also edited several volumes including The Elusive Synthesis: Science and Aesthetics (Kluwer, 1996), Science and the Quest for Reality (New York University, 1997), and a collaborative translation project, The Evolutionary Biology Papers of Elie Metchnikoff (Kluwer, 2000). In 2008, he was the recipient of the Science Medal awarded by the University of Bologna and in 2010 a PhD honoris causa from the University of Haifa.