“I try to work out why medicine remains with so many imperfections,” Gawande says, “what we can do to make them better, and what the experience is like of both practicing medicine and being someone who has to be cured for by a system that will always be imperfect.”

His book “Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science” was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2002.

Gawande’s publishers say his work takes on prominent questions in unconventional ways.

“He is willing to ask questions that might seem obvious but they have complicated and informative answers,” Bershtel says.

And, according to Bershtel, sustaining a career as a writer requires Gawande to find a balance with his medical commitments.

“Often with authors you say to them, ‘You have to drop everything else and work on this book, I’m sure whatever else you’re doing isn’t a matter of life and death,’” Bershtel says. “But in his case, it was!”

‘PROFESSIONAL DILETTANTE’

Born and raised in Ohio to Indian parents, Gawande studied Biology and Political Science at Stanford University as an undergraduate, earned his masters degree at Oxford University, and attended HMS and SPH.

And he took a year off during medical school to serve as a senior adviser for health policy in the Clinton administration. It was in Washington that Gawande got an insider’s look into “the battles of trying to actually reform the health care system.” Today, he describes the endeavor as a failure—“a very trying experience with many lessons learned.”

Gawande says his mother-in-law likes to call him a “professional dilettante”—a title he embraces. Those who know Gawande say his expansive dabbling will enable him to contribute something unique in his Thursday speech.

“Given his broad horizon and the depth of his experience—working in the White House in health-care policy and in the trenches at an acute-care hospital—he has an extraordinary perspective that covers the depth and breadth of the field of medicine,” says Anthony D. Whittemore, Chief Medical Officer at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and HMS Professor of Surgery. “That puts him in a unique position to describe the whole spectrum of opportunities available in health care.”

—Staff writer Lulu Zhou can be reached at luluzhou@fas.harvard.edu.