About me

Nathaniel Comfort is the 2015-16 Baruch Blumberg Professor of Astrobiology at the Library of Congress/NASA. He is also a professor in the Department of the History of Medicine at The Johns Hopkins University. From 1997 to 2002, he was on the history faculty at The George Washington University, where he also served as Deputy Director of the Center for History of Recent Science. The Center’s director and founder was Horace Freeland Judson (The Eighth Day of Creation), who, along with John McPhee and Monty Python, Comfort considers among his biggest writing influences.

Comfort’s books include The Science of Human Perfection: How Genes Became the Heart of American Medicine (Yale, 2012), The Tangled Field: Barbara McClintock’s Search for the Patterns of Genetic Control (Harvard, 2001), and the edited volume, The Panda’s Black Box: Opening Up the Intelligent Design Debate (Johns Hopkins, 2007). In addition to scholarly articles, he has written for Aeon, The Nation, The Point, Natural History, the New York Times Book Review, National Public Radio, Nature, Science, New Scientist, The Believer, and other publications. Links to many of these articles can be found at http://nathanielcomfort.com. Should he expire tomorrow, he would be survived, in decreasing size order, by a son, a wife, a daughter, a dog, a cat, another cat, and still another cat.

14 thoughts on “About me”

  1. He died in 1985 but this very personal museum is often a lasting reminder of your very remarkable man.
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    • Actually not true. He is still alive, thank you very much, but I appreciate the sentiment. You would not believe the inquiries I usually hear around me, but I am a Mac guy myself. This is a little non-sequitur-y. Having trouble concentrating? Do you get enough DNA in your diet?

      • Yes, I also, am a Mac & my husband a PC. 😉 Your sharp intellectual wit is extremely refreshing in a world of “misinformation watchers”. 😉 Your “Arse hole” video way hysterical & passed on to those that may identify with it.

        Thank you for being YOU!!! You assisted me in exceeding my endorphin level for today, and probably tomorrow… 😉

        Gayle

    • Yes I am always stunned at the number of German gaming monitor reviewers who follow DNA, genomics, and the history of genetics. My theory is that you are all cyborgs that have gained pre-syntactic historical consciousness.

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