Besides being a practicing physician, William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) was a poet, short-story writer, novelist, translator, playwright, and essayist whose contribution to the development of modern American poetry grew out of his commitment to recording the "local" experience of Rutherford, New Jersey, and its environs.
The surgeon and public health leader Dr. Atul Gawande is a MacArthur Fellow and a staff writer for the New Yorker and has written four New York Times best sellers.