Irving Charles Krauthammer (March 13, 1950 – June 21, 2018) was an influential neoconservative columnist and political commentator, known for his hawkish foreign policy advocacy. Born in Manhattan, New York City, he was raised in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He earned a B.A. from McGill University in 1970, studied politics at Balliol College, Oxford as a Commonwealth Scholar, and received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1975. During his first year at Harvard, a diving board accident severed his spinal cord at C5, leaving him permanently paralyzed from the waist down; after 14 months of recovery, he resumed studies and became chief resident in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he co-discovered a form of bipolar disease and contributed to the DSM-III in 1980. Transitioning from medicine, he joined the Carter administration in 1978 as director of psychiatric research planning, then served as speechwriter to Vice President Walter Mondale in 1980. He entered journalism at The New Republic in 1981, winning the National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism in 1984 and the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary. Joining The Washington Post in 1985, his columns were syndicated to over 400 publications. A panelist on PBS's Inside Washington (1990-2013) and Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier, he authored bestsellers like Things That Matter (2013) and The Point of It All (2018, posthumous). He served on President George W. Bush's Council on Bioethics (2001-2006), chaired Pro Musica Hebraica, and was president of the Krauthammer Foundation. Married to Robyn Trethewey since 1974, he had one son, Daniel. Krauthammer died of small intestine cancer in Atlanta, Georgia, at age 68.