Ernest Hemingway and Paul de Kruif

Abstract

The many biographies of Ernest Hemingway are virtually silent about his friendship with the science writer Paul de Kruif (1890–1971). Of Dutch descent, De Kruif grew up in Michigan and studied bacteriology at the University of Michigan. He served in World War I, and afterward quit the laboratory to specialize in popularizing medical history and science. He helped Sinclair Lewis write Arrowsmith (1925), became famous with his own first book, The Microbe Hunters (1926), and would eventually publish a dozen books in three-and-a-half decades. This note demonstrates that De Kruif and Hemingway corresponded and knew one another’s work well.