Robin Cook

Early life and career Cook was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Woodside, Queens. He relocated to Leonia, New Jersey when he was eight years old, where he could first have the "luxury" of having his own room. He graduated from Leonia High School in 1958.

Subsequently, Cook graduated from Wesleyan University and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and finished his postgraduate medical training at Harvard.

Cook managed the Cousteau Society's blood-gas laboratory in the south of France. He later became an aquanaut with the U.S. Navy's SEALAB program when he was drafted in 1969. Cook served in the Navy from 1969 to 1971, attaining the rank of lieutenant commander. He wrote his first novel, Year of the Intern, while serving aboard the Polaris-type submarine .

Cook's novels have anticipated national controversy. In an interview with Stephen McDonald about the novel Shock, Cook admitted the book's timing was fortuitous: I suppose that you could say that it's the most like Coma in fact that it deals with an issue that everybody seems to be concerned about. I wrote this book to address the stem cell issue, which the public really doesn't know anything about. Besides entertaining readers, my main goal is to get people interested in some of these issues, because it's the public that ultimately should be able to decide which way we ought to go in something as ethically questioning as stem cell research.

"I joke that if my books stop selling, I can always fall back on brain surgery," he says. "But I am still very interested in it. If I had to do it over again, I would still study medicine. I think of myself more as a doctor who writes, rather than a writer who happens to be a doctor." He explained the popularity of his works thus: "The main reason is, we all realize we are at risk. We're all going to be patients sometime," he says. "You can write about great white sharks or haunted houses, and you can say I'm not going into the ocean or I'm not going in haunted houses, but you can't say you're not going to go into a hospital."

Cook is a private member of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Board of Trustees. The Board of Trustees, directed by chairman Joseph B. Gildenhorn, are appointed to six-year terms by the President of the United States.

Books Year of the Intern (1972), Coma (1977), Sphinx (1979), Brain (1980), Fever (1982), Godplayer (1983), Mindbend (1985), Outbreak (1987), Mortal Fear (1988), Mutation (1989), Harmful Intent (1990), Vital Signs (1991), Terminal (1993), Fatal Cure (1993), Acceptable Risk (1995), Invasion (1997), Toxin (1998), Abduction (2000), Shock (2001), Seizure (2003), Death Benefit (2011), Nano (2013), Cell (2014), Host (2015), Charlatans (2017), Viral (2021), Bellevue (2024),

Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery series Blindsight (1992), Contagion (1995), Chromosome 6 (1997), Vector (1999), Marker (2005), Crisis (2006), Critical (2007), Foreign Body (2008), Intervention (2009), Cure (2010), Pandemic (2018), Genesis (2019), Night Shift (2022), Manner of Death (2023), Spasm (2025),

Movie and television adaptations Coma (1977) has been adapted for both film and television: Coma (1978), a feature movie directed by author/doctor Michael Crichton and produced by Martin Erlichmann for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Coma (airdates September 3–4, 2012) a four-hour A&E television mini-series based on the 1977 novel and subsequent 1978 movie, directed by Mikael Salomon and produced by brothers Ridley and Tony Scott. Sphinx (1979) was adapted into the feature movie Sphinx (1981), directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, produced by Orion Pictures for Warner Bros., and featuring Lesley-Anne Down and Frank Langella. Harmful Intent (1990) was adapted as the CBS television movie Robin Cook's Harmful Intent (broadcast January 1, 1993), directed by John Patterson and produced by David A. Rosemont Mortal Fear (1988) was as an eponymous TV movie, broadcast November 20, 1994, directed by Larry Shaw Outbreak (1987) was adapted as the movie Virus (Formula For Death) (broadcast May 1995), directed by Armand Mastroianni. Terminal (1993) was adapted as a TV movie, directed by Larry Elikann. Invasion (1997) was adapted as an eponymous NBC TV mini-series (airdate May 4, 1997), directed by Armand Mastroianni. Acceptable Risk (1995) was adapted as a TV movie in 2001, directed by William A. Graham and starring Chad Lowe and Kelly Rutherford. Foreign Body (2008) resulted in a 2008 prequel, produced as an eponymous web series by the production companies Vuguru (owned by former Walt Disney CEO Michael Eisner), Cyber Group Studios (owned by the former Walt Disney executives Dominique Bourse and Pierre Sissmann), and Big Fantastic (owned by the creators of the web television series SamHas7Friends and Prom Queen). The series, which played from May 27 through August 4, 2008, comprised 50 episodes of approximately two minutes each, with a new video posted every weekday.