Charles Krauthammer

His father, Shulim Krauthammer (November 23, 1904 – June 1987), was from Bolekhiv, Ukraine (then the Austro-Hungarian Empire), and later became a naturalized citizen of France.

His mother, Thea (née Horowitz; July 28, 1921 – February 14, 2019 ), was from Antwerp, Belgium.

The Krauthammer family was a French-speaking household.

When he was 5, the Krauthammers moved to Montreal.

Through the school year, they resided in Montreal and spent the summers in Long Beach, New York.

Both of his parents were Orthodox Jews, and he graduated from Herzliah High School.

Charles Krauthammer (March 13, 1950 – June 21, 2018) was an American political columnist.

Krauthammer was born on March 13, 1950, in the New York City borough of Manhattan.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Krauthammer embarked on a career as a columnist and political commentator.

Krauthammer attended McGill University in Montreal, graduating in 1970 with first-class honours in economics and political science.

At that time, McGill University was a hotbed of radical sentiment, something that Krauthammer said influenced his dislike of political extremism.

"I became very acutely aware of the dangers, the hypocrisies, and sort of the extremism of the political extremes. And it cleansed me very early in my political evolution of any romanticism."

He later said: "I detested the extreme Left and extreme Right, and found myself somewhere in the middle."

The following year, after graduating from McGill, he studied as a Commonwealth Scholar in politics at Balliol College, Oxford, before returning to the United States to attend medical school at Harvard.

A diving accident during his first year of medical school left Krauthammer paralyzed from the waist down.

He remained with his Harvard Medical School class during his hospitalization, graduating in 1975.

He credited Hermann Lisco, associate dean of students, for making it happen.

From 1975 through 1978, Krauthammer was a resident in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, serving as chief resident his final year.

During his time as chief resident, he noted a variant of manic depression (bipolar disorder) that he identified and named secondary mania.

He published his findings in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

He also co-authored a path-finding study on the epidemiology of mania.

He joined the Carter administration in 1978 as a director of psychiatric research, eventually becoming the speechwriter to Vice President Walter Mondale in 1980.

In 1978, Krauthammer relocated to Washington, D.C., to direct planning in psychiatric research under the Carter administration.

In 1979, Krauthammer joined The New Republic as both a writer and editor.

After spending 14 months recovering in a hospital, he returned to medical school, graduating to become a psychiatrist involved in the creation of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III in 1980.

He began contributing articles about politics to The New Republic and, in 1980, served as a speechwriter to Vice President Walter Mondale.

He contributed to the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

In 1983, he began writing essays for Time magazine, including one on the Reagan Doctrine, which first brought him national acclaim as a writer.

In 1984, he was board certified in psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.

In 1985, he began writing a weekly column for The Washington Post, which earned him the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for his "witty and insightful columns on national issues".

Krauthammer began writing regular editorials for The Washington Post in 1985 and became a nationally syndicated columnist.

A moderate liberal who turned independent conservative as a political pundit, Krauthammer won the Pulitzer Prize for his columns in The Washington Post in 1987.

His weekly column was syndicated to more than 400 publications worldwide.

While in his first year studying medicine at Harvard Medical School, Krauthammer became permanently paralyzed from the waist down after a diving board accident that severed his spinal cord at cervical spinal nerve 5.

He was a weekly panelist on the PBS news program Inside Washington from 1990 until it ceased production in December 2013.

Krauthammer had been a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, a Fox News contributor, and a nightly panelist on Special Report with Bret Baier on Fox News.

Krauthammer received acclaim for his writing on foreign policy, among other matters.

He was a leading conservative voice and proponent of United States military and political engagement on the global stage, coining the term Reagan Doctrine and advocating both the Gulf War and the Iraq War.

In August 2017, due to his battle with cancer, Krauthammer stopped writing his column and serving as a Fox News contributor.

He died on June 21, 2018.