Short answers, pulled from the story.
Walter Isaacson has written biographies of Henry Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Leonardo da Vinci, Jennifer Doudna, and Elon Musk, along with The Innovators, about the digital revolution, and a book on the Declaration of Independence's opening sentence. He also co-authored The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made with Evan Thomas in 1986.
Isaacson attended Harvard University, where he majored in history and literature and graduated in 1974. He then studied at Pembroke College, Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, earning first-class honours in philosophy, politics, and economics.
Steve Jobs was published on the 24th of October, 2011 by Simon & Schuster, only weeks after Jobs's death. It became an international bestseller, breaking all records for biography sales, and earned Isaacson the 2012 Gerald Loeb Award.
Isaacson served as chairman and CEO of CNN beginning in July 2001, replacing Tom Johnson. He guided the network through the events of the 11th of September 2001, just two months into his tenure, and stepped down in January 2003 to lead the Aspen Institute.
Isaacson served as president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C., from 2003 until 2018. Dan Porterfield, then president of Franklin & Marshall College, was named his successor in November 2017.
Isaacson received the National Humanities Medal from President Joe Biden in 2023 and was selected for the Jefferson Lecture by the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2014, the federal government's highest humanities honor. He also received the Royal Society of Arts' 2013 Benjamin Franklin Medal and was named to the Time 100 list in 2012.