David Rosner

David Rosner, Ph.D., M.P.H., is the Ronald H. Lauterstein Professor of Sociomedical Sciences, a professor of history with the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and co-director of the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health. He focuses on research at the intersection of public health and social history and the politics of occupational disease and industrial pollution. He has been actively involved in lawsuits on behalf of individuals, cities, states and communities around the nation who are trying to hold the lead and other polluting industry accountable for past acts that have resulted in damage to America's workers, communities and children.

Prior to joining the Columbia faculty in 1998, Rosner was University Distinguished Professor of History at the City University of New York. In 2010, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine. In addition to numerous grants, he has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a recipient of a Robert Wood Johnson Investigator Award, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow and a Josiah Macy Fellow. He has been awarded the Distinguished Scholar's Prize from the City University and the Viseltear Prize for Outstanding Work in the History of Public Health from the American Public Health Association, among others.

Rosner has also been honored by the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health and, with Gerald Markowitz, was awarded the Upton Sinclair Memorial Lectureship "For Outstanding Occupational Health, Safety, and Environmental Journalism by the American Industrial Hygiene Association." He is an author of many books on occupational disease, epidemics and public health, most recently with Gerald Markowitz, Lead Wars: The politics of science and the Fate of America’s Children, (University of California Press, 2013).

He received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1978.