Background

Anthony Stephen Fauci was born on December 24, 1940, in Brooklyn, New York, to Eugenia Lillian and Stephen A. Fauci (1910–2008). Fauci's father was a pharmacist with a Columbia University education who had his own business. Fauci's mother and sister, Denise, worked at the pharmacy's front desk while Fauci delivered prescriptions. The pharmacy was in Brooklyn's Dyker Heights district, just beneath the family's apartment, previously in the Bensonhurst neighborhood.

In the late 1800s, Fauci's grandparents immigrated from Italy to the United States. Antonino Fauci and Calogera Guardino, his paternal grandparents, were from Sciacca, and his maternal grandparents were from Naples.

Fauci was raised Catholic but now considers himself a humanist, believing "that there are many aspects about organized religion that are terrible, and [that] he tends to keep away from" it.

Despite being only 5 ft, 7 in (1.70 m) tall, Fauci captained the basketball team at Regis High Institution, a private Jesuit school on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

Fauci entered the College of the Holy Cross after graduating in 1958, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Classics with a pre-med track in 1962. Fauci then went to Cornell University's Medical College (now Weill Cornell Medicine), where he received his Doctor of Medicine degree first in his class in 1966. At the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, he completed an internship and residency in internal medicine (now Weill Cornell Medical Center).

Marriage, Wife & Kids

Fauci married Christine Grady, a nurse, and bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health, in 1985 after they met while treating a patient. Grady is the director of the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center's Department of Bioethics.

The couple has three daughters, Jennifer, Megan, and Alison.

Career

To pursue his science career, Anthony joined the National Institutes of Health in 1968 as a clinical associate in the Laboratory of Clinical Investigation at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He had a big success there, and in 1974 he was chosen as the Head of the Clinical Physiology Section.

He was a very talented scientist and leader. In 1984, he became Chief of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation. NIAID appreciated Anthony for his contribution to science, and he became a director there. He had the power of basic and applied research on infectious and immune-mediated illnesses. Anthony Fauci made incredible contributions to understanding things like how HIV destroys the human body's defenses and advanced therapies for fatal diseases such as lymphomatoid granulomatosis, polyarteritis, and granulomatosis with polyangiitis.

He also focused on the immunopathogenic mechanisms of HIV infection and the body's immune reactions to HIV. Fauci was known for developing strategies for therapy and immune reconstitution after such terrible diseases as HIV.

Along with his colleagues, he published numerous scientific works like "Glucocorticosteroid therapy: mechanisms of action and clinical considerations," "The spectrum of vasculitis: clinical, pathologic, immunologic and therapeutic considerations," "Latent reservoirs of HIV: obstacles to the eradication of virus," and "The challenge of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases."

During his long career, he has won numerous awards. In 1979 he was honored with the Arthur S. Flemming Award and won the Ernst Jung Prize in 1995. In 2007, he won the Lasker Award, and the following year, he got the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He also won the National Medal of Science and Albany Medical Center Prize.

HIV/AIDS epidemic

During the early 1980s AIDS epidemic, Fauci was one of the most prominent researchers. He and his team of researchers started seeking a vaccine or cure for this unique virus in 1981, but they ran into many roadblocks. Protesters gathered at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in October 1988. Fauci, who took over as director of the institute in 1984, took the brunt of the backlash from the LGBTQ community, which the government had primarily disregarded.

In the media, leading AIDS activist Larry Kramer constantly criticized Fauci.

He referred to him as an "incompetent moron" and a "pill-pushing" medical establishment tool. Although many people thought Fauci wasn't doing enough, he didn't have authority over medicine approval. In the late 1980s, Fauci made an effort to reach out to the LGBT community in New York and San Francisco to see if he and the NIAID could come up with a solution. Though Fauci was initially chastised for handling the AIDS crisis, LGBT eventually recognized his contributions to the community. Kramer, who had long despised Fauci for handling the AIDS crisis, finally referred to him as "the only true and great hero" among government officials dealing with the crisis.

"HIV has truly defined my career and my identity," Fauci remarked of his participation in the fight against HIV/AIDS in a December 24, 2020 interview.