Jack El-Hai

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Jack El-Hai is an American journalist and author who focuses most of his work on the history of medicine, the history of science, and other historical topics.

Contents

Career

El-Hai graduated from Carleton College in 1979. He was the president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. He has been a contributor to the Atlantic Monthly , the Washington Post Magazine , American Heritage , and other publications. El-Hai has also taught courses on nonfiction writing at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the Creative Writing Program of the University of Minnesota, the Split Rock Arts Program, the Mayo Clinic, and the Loft Literary Center. He has recently started teaching creative writing courses at Augsburg College. [1]

Works

He is the author of a biography of Dr. Walter Freeman, The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness (2005, Wiley), The Nazi and the Psychiatrist (2013), and Turbulent Air: A History of Northwest Airlines (2013). [2] His shorter works have appeared in The Atlantic,Wired, Scientific American Mind, The History Channel Magazine, and many other publications. [1]

Based on El-Hai’s The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, Nuremberg (2025) joined other films and television productions about the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders in 1945, most notably Stanley Kramer’s Oscar-winning classic Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). Film director James Vanderbilt acknowledged that he "found his angle” for his rendition of the historical event in El-Hai’s account of the interaction between American psychiatrist Douglas Kelley and Hermann Göring. Kelley was "the young army psychiatrist tasked with determining the mental competence of the accused Germans slated to stand trial at Nuremberg”; Göring was the most senior Nazi put on trial in Nuremberg. [3]


Awards and honors

In 2002, he was the winner of an outstanding medical article as recognized by the June Roth Memorial Fund. [4]

Personal

El-Hai lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two daughters.

References

  1. 1 2 "Jack El-Hai | Author & Teacher - Home". El-Hai. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
  2. ↑ Goetzman, Amy (23 October 2013). "Jack El-Hai juggles two new books, on wildly different subjects". MinnPost. Retrieved 23 May 2016.
  3. ↑ McHugh, Clare (23 October 2025). "'This history mustn't be forgotten': The real story behind the Nuremberg trials". BBC Culture. Retrieved 1 November 2025.
  4. ↑ "ASJA Award Recipients". ASJA. Archived from the original on 5 February 2012. Retrieved 24 August 2010.


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