Paul Farmer

Paul Farmer is one of the figures who genuinely humbles me. Armed with both an MD and a PhD from Harvard, he could have taken any comfortable path; instead he poured that brilliance into Haiti's poorest communities and insisted, relentlessly, that health is a human right. The MacArthur and the Public Welfare Medal were almost afterthoughts to the actual work of sitting with people the world had written off. His death in 2022 felt like a real loss. What stays with me is the question his life quietly poses to the rest of us: for whom, exactly, are we using our gifts?

Name (English)

Paul Farmer

Name (Japanese)

ポール・ファーマー

Reading

ぽーる・ふぁーまー

Born

October 26, 1959 – February 21, 2022

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Scorpio / Boar

Origin

North Adams, Massachusetts, United States

Occupation

anthropologist / human rights defender / physician / writer

High school

Hernando High School

University

Duke University

Awards & achievements

• 2016 Washburn Award
• 1993 MacArthur Fellows Program
• 2016 Bronislaw Malinowski Award
• 2018 NAS Public Welfare Medal
• 2006 Mendel Medal
• 2010 honorary doctor of the University of Miami
• 2006 honorary doctorate from Princeton University
• 2009 honorary doctorate from Columbia University

• Official sitehttps://www.pih.org/paul-farmer
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul%20Farmer
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%9D%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB%E3%83%BB%E3%83%95%E3%82%A1%E3%83%BC%E3%83%9E%E3%83%BC
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2263705

Tags

• Massachusetts
• anthropologist
• human rights defender
• physician

Last updated

2026-06-21

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.