A searching and unsentimental novel of scientific ambition, professional integrity, and the uneasy marriage of research and commerce.
First published in 1925, Arrowsmith traces the career of Martin Arrowsmith, a gifted but conflicted physician whose devotion to scientific inquiry brings him into repeated tension with institutional authority and commercial medicine. From small-town practice to laboratory research and epidemic response, Lewis follows his protagonist through the competing demands of idealism, recognition, and compromise.
Working in collaboration with the microbiologist Paul de Kruif, Lewis renders the world of early twentieth-century medical science with unusual precision. The novel explores the ethical dilemmas inherent in research, the pressures of philanthropy and patronage, and the difficulty of sustaining intellectual independence within expanding bureaucracies. Arrowsmith's struggle is not merely professional but moral: whether to pursue truth wherever it leads, or to accept the rewards of conformity.
Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1926-though declined by Lewis-Arrowsmith remains one of the most incisive American novels of professional life and scientific culture in the modern age.
