Dr. Hiatt attended Harvard College and received his M.D. from the Harvard Medical School in 1948. Trained in clinical medicine, biochemistry, and molecular biology, he has been on the Harvard University faculty since 1955. His early research focussed on the application of molecular biology to medical problems, particularly cancer. He was a member of the team at the Pasteur Institute, Paris, that first identified and described messenger RNA, and he was among the first to demonstrate messenger RNA in mammalian cells.

From 1963 to 1972, he was the first Herrman L. Blumgart Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Physician-in-Chief at Beth Israel Hospital. During his tenure, Beth Israel became among the first of the nation's teaching hospitals both to seek applications of molecular and cell biology to clinical medicine and to develop teaching and research programs in primary care.

From 1972 to 1984, while he was Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, the School strengthened greatly its work in the quantitative analytic sciences, introduced molecular and cell biology into its research and teaching, began its program in health policy and management, the first in a public health school, and promoted integration of its teaching and research programs with those in other Harvard Faculties.

He is now Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Senior Physician at the Brigham and Women's Hospital. He directed a team of colleagues from the Harvard Faculties of Medicine, Public Health, Law, and Arts and Sciences in a multi-year study of medical injury, medical malpractice, and the tort litigation system. This work was described in a series of articles and a book, A Measure of Malpractice, published by Harvard University Press in 1993 and has been the basis for proposals for system reform in several states. He began and helped develop the fellowship program in Research Training in Clinical Effectiveness at Brigham and Women's Hospital, which trains physicians to carry out research on issues of quality and costs of medical care. His present research concerns social aspects of health. He recently chaired the Committee on National Needs for Biomedical and Behavioral Scientists of the National Research Council.

From 1991 to 1997, he was Secretary of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, where he began and directs the Academy's Initiatives For Children program. The program brings together academics and community members to address a range of educational, health, and social issues affecting the nation's children.

Dr. Hiatt's research articles appear in such publications as the Journal of Molecular Biology, Journal of Biological Chemistry, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of the American Medical Association. He has written for the lay press in areas of disease prevention, health services, and the health implications of the nuclear arms race. His book, Medical Lifeboat: Will There Be Room For You in the Health Care System?, Harper & Row, 1989, describes ways to deal with some major problems of our health care system.

He is a member of the Association of American Physicians, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the American Public Health Association, as well as several other organizations.