6-hour series is based on ‘The Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer’.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: A documentary based on preeminent Indian American doctor Siddhartha Mukherjee’s Pulitzer winning book, “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer,” has been nominated for an Emmy Award, one of five aspirants in the bracket for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series.
The six-hour series was created for American television channel PBS and tells the complete story of cancer, from ancient times to the modern day and age.
The film portrays the history of the illness and unfolding scientific mysteries, illustrated by intimate personal accounts and geared to the layman’s understanding and fear of this once-unmentionable disease. It contains archival film and interviews with experts besides illustrations and computer graphics.
Mukherjee, who previously authored “The Laws of Medicine,” is currently an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University in New York and a staff cancer physician at Columbia University Medical Center.
He has also served as the Plummer Visiting Professor at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, the Joseph Garland lecturer at the Massachusetts Medical Society, and an honorary visiting professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. A Rhodes scholar, he is a graduate of Stanford University, the University of Oxford, and Harvard Medical School.
Siddhartha Mukherjee was born in New Delhi, India to Sibeswar Mukherjee, an executive with Mitsubishi, and Chandana Mukherjee, a former schoolteacher from Kolkata.
Mukherjee lives in New York and is married to artist Sarah Sze, winner of a MacArthur Genius Grant and chosen as the U.S. representative at the 2013 Venice Biennale contemporary art exhibition, according to NPR. They have two daughters, Leela and Aria.