Michael Palmer (novelist)

Michael Stephen Palmer
Born	October 9, 1942 Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	October 30, 2013 (aged 71) New York City, New York, U.S.
Cause of death	heart attack/stroke
Education	Wesleyan University Case Western Reserve University
Occupation	physician, author
Employer	Massachusetts Medical Society
Spouse(s)	Judith Grass (divorced) Noelle Shaughnessy (divorced)
Partner(s)	Robin Broady
Children	Matthew, Daniel, and Luke
Parent(s)	Milton and May Palmer

Michael Stephen Palmer, M.D. (October 9, 1942 – October 30, 2013), was an American physician and author. His novels are often referred to as medical thrillers. Some of his novels have made the New York Times Best Seller List and have been translated into 35 languages. One, Extreme Measures (1991), was adopted into a 1996 film of the same name starring Hugh Grant, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Gene Hackman.

Michael Stephen Palmer was born in Springfield, Massachusetts on October 9, 1942 to Milton and May Palmer. He grew up with two younger sisters, Donna and Susan. Palmer graduated from Wesleyan University in 1964 with a pre-med major, and with "sort of a Russian minor". He then went to Case Western Reserve University for medical school. Palmer trained in internal medicine at Boston City Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Palmer once claimed he never wanted to be a writer. He did not think he had much "flair" for it, even though he read in his spare time. In 1978, he read Robin Cook's medical thriller Coma (1977). Palmer thought if Cook, also a Wesleyan graduate, could write a novel, then he could too. When not writing, he worked part-time at Massachusetts Medical Society. Before he began work on his first published novel, The Sisterhood, about euthanasia, Palmer was practicing treatment of drug addiction.

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