Francisco González Crussí

Among the awards he has won is a Fellowship of the Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (September 2000 to February 2001), a Certificate of Achievement by the Office of the Secretary of State of Illinois (2009), a career achievement prize by the ABC Hospital of Mexico City (2009) and a Medal of Merit from the University of Veracruz, Mexico. Between 2005 and 2007 he was appointed as consultant in the discipline of literary essay, in the Mexican government's office in charge of promoting culture and the arts, F.O.N.C.A. (Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes). In 2014 he was awarded the Merck Literary Prize in Rome, for his book Carrying the Heart (translated as Organi Vitali, Adelphi, Milan, 2014). On November 19, 2019 he was awarded the "Pedro Henriquez Ureña International Prize for the Essay" given by the Mexican Academy of Language (Academia Mexicana de la Lengua)

This play was also presented in Seattle (November-December 1996) by the Aha! Theater Company. Reviewed in The Seattle Times in 1996.

Theater play: The work of Dr. Gonzalez Crussi was adapted for the stage in 1995 by a theatrical company of Chicago (Live Bait Company, director Sharon Evans), under the name "Memento Mori". Reviewed in Chicago Tribune, and Chicago Sun-Times in 1995.

Television Documentary: The literary work of Dr. Gonzalez Crussi was featured by the British Broadcasting Corporation. The BBC production (director Kevin Hull) was entitled "Day of the Dead", which was filed in the British Film Institute archive. It was part of the TV series Bookmark, and was first aired in the UK on April 27, 1992 on BBC2. The film was reviewed in The Daily Telegraph; in The Times; and the BMJ in 1992.

Born in a modest neighborhood of Mexico City in 1936, F. Gonzalez-Crussi was raised by his widowed mother, who owned a small drugstore. He studied medicine in the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and graduated in 1961. He migrated to the United States, where he obtained post-graduate training in the specialty of pathology, later sub-specializing in pediatric pathology. He began his career in 1967 in academic medicine in Canada, at Queen's University (Kingston, Ontario), and moved back to the United States in 1973, where he was a Professor of Pathology at Indiana University until 1978, when he relocated to Chicago, there to become Professor of Pathology at Northwestern University School of Medicine and Head of Laboratories of Children's Memorial Hospital until his retirement in 2001. His literary work first became known in 1985, with the appearance of his book Notes of an Anatomist, to considerable critical acclaim. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1987.