Keith Black, MD

Keith Black, MD serves as Chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery and Director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. At age 17, he published his first scientific paper, which earned a Westinghouse Science Award. He completed an accelerated college program at the University of Michigan and earned both his undergraduate and medical degrees in six years. Before joining Cedars-Sinai, Black served on the UCLA faculty for 10 years where he was a professor of neurosurgery and was named the Ruth and Raymond Stotter chair in the Department of Surgery and was head of the UCLA Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program.

Black has been instrumental in helping to raise money to fight cancer, and his push has been joined by many notables in Hollywood. Black's crusade against cancer, and his exceptional skill with the scalpel, have led to numerous honors including appearing on the cover of Time Magazine and Newsweek International. Esquire Magazine named him one of the "21 Most Important People of the 21st Century," and in 2001, he was presented with an Essence Award.

About his new book

Brain Surgeon: A Doctor's Inspiring Encounters with Mortality and Miracles

Welcome to tiger country: the treacherous territory where a single wrong move by a brain surgeon can devastate - or end - a patient's life. This is the terrain world-renowned neurosurgeon Keith Black, MD, enters every day to produce virtual medical miracles. Now, in Brain Surgeon, Dr. Black invites readers to shadow his breathtaking journeys into the brain as he battles some of the deadliest and most feared tumors known to medical science. Along the way, he shares his unique insights about the inner workings of the brain, his unwavering optimism for the future of medicine, and the extraordinary stories of his patients-from ministers and rock stars to wealthy entrepreneurs and uninsured students-whom he celebrates as the real heroes

In his speeches, Black, reflects on his extraordinary life and career. As an African-American growing up in Alabama and Ohio, Black was driven by his parents to believe that education could take him to places considered by many to be unreachable. "I was brought up to believe there was nothing that I could not do," says Black. That belief, fostered by parents who ignored the social barriers facing African Americans in the deep South in the 1960s, motivated him to excel beyond external expectations. His faith in education and in knowing that hard work and superior knowledge and performance would get him past whatever bigotry and barriers lay in his path, led him to become a TIME Magazine Hero of Medicine and perhaps the world's greatest Brain Surgeon.

From Booklist

Black, chair of the neurosurgery department of Los Angeles' prestigious Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, didn't get where he is by having influential connections or being born to wealth and privilege. Well . . . not privilege in the traditional sense. But he does indeed feel privileged to have had parents who ignored the social barriers facing African Americans in the deep South in the 1960s and motivated both their sons to excel beyond external expectations. That's why, when he faced a bigoted department head at the University of Michigan Medical School, who would deny him entrance to the neurosurgery department, Black was prepared to overcome those biases by means of superior knowledge and performance. He went on to achieve a stellar career in research and neurosurgery, first at UCLA and then at Cedars-Sinai. His story, coupled with harrowing accounts of a handful of his patients, is cleanly written, inspirational, and a superb fit for the times in which we live.