Samuel Thier

Samuel Thier, MD

Professor of Health Care Policy and Medicine, Emeritus, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School; Practicing Physician, Massachusetts General Hospital
Massachusetts General HospitalMedicine, Bulfinch 37055 Fruit St Boston MA 02114
617-726-1811

Samuel O. Thier is professor of Medicine and Health Care Policy, Emeritus.  He had been professor of Medicine and professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School from 1994-2007.  He was president and chief executive officer of Partners HealthCare System, Inc. from July 1996 to December 2002.  From 1994-1997 he served as president of The Massachusetts General Hospital, having served the previous three years as Brandeis’ sixth president.  Prior to that he served six years as president of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences.  He also served eleven years as chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine at Yale University School of Medicine, where he was Sterling Professor. 

Dr. Thier is a nationally-known, widely-published authority on internal medicine and kidney disease and is equally well known for his expertise in the areas of national health policy, medical education and biomedical research.  Born in New York, he attended Cornell University and received his medical degree from the State University of New York at Syracuse in 1960.  He served on the medical staff of Massachusetts General Hospital, as an intern, resident, chief resident in medicine and chief of the Renal Unit, and held a faculty appointment at Harvard.  Prior to joining the faculty of Yale in 1975, he was professor and Vice Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

He holds sixteen honorary degrees and is the recipient of the UC Medal of the University of California, San Francisco.  He has served as president of the American Federation of Clinical Research and chairman of the American Board of Internal Medicine and is a Master of the American College of Physicians, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Philosophical Society.  Dr. Thier is a director of Charles River Laboratories, Inc., and Merck & Co., Inc. and a member of the Board of Overseers of TIAA-CREF, the Board of Overseers of Cornell University Weill Medical College, and the Board of Overseers of Brandeis University Heller School for Social Policy and Management.