Fauci attended Regis High School in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where he captained the school’s basketball team despite standing only 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m) tall. After graduating from high school in 1958, Fauci attended the College of the Holy Cross, graduating in 1962 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in classics with a pre-med track. Fauci then attended medical school at Cornell University Medical College where he graduated first in his class with a Doctor of Medicine in 1966. He completed an internship and residency in internal medicine at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, now known as New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine.

In 1968, Fauci joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a clinical associate in the Laboratory of Clinical Investigation (LCI) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In 1974, he became head of the Clinical Physiology Section, LCI, and in 1980 was appointed Chief of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation. In 1984, he became director of NIAID, a position he still holds as of 2020. In that role he is responsible for an extensive research portfolio of basic and applied research on infectious and immune-mediated illnesses. He has turned down several offers to lead his agency’s parent, the NIH, and has been at the forefront of U.S. efforts to contend with viral diseases like HIV/AIDS, SARS, the 2009 swine flu pandemic, MERS, Ebola and COVID-19.

Fauci was one of the leading researchers during the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s. In 1981, he heard of the virus, and he and his team of researchers began looking for a vaccine or treatment for this novel virus, though they would meet a number of obstacles. In October 1988, protesters came to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Fauci, who had become the institute’s director in 1984, bore the brunt of the anger from the LGBTQ community, who were largely ignored by the government.

Fauci has made important scientific observations that contributed to the understanding of regulation of the human immune response, and is recognized for delineating the mechanisms whereby immunosuppressive agents adapt to that response. He developed therapies for formerly fatal diseases such as polyarteritis nodosa, granulomatosis with polyangiitis, and lymphomatoid granulomatosis. In a 1985 Stanford University Arthritis Center Survey of the American Rheumatism Association, membership ranked Fauci’s work on the treatment of polyarteritis nodosa and granulomatosis with polyangiitis as one of the most important advances in patient management in rheumatology over the previous 20 years.

In 1985, Fauci married Christine Grady, a nurse and bioethicist with the NIH, after they met while treating a patient. Grady is chief of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. The couple have three adult daughters.

In 2003, the Institute for Scientific Information stated that from 1983 to 2002, “Fauci was the 13th most-cited scientist among the 2.5 to 3 million authors in all disciplines throughout the world who published articles in scientific journals.” As a government scientist under six presidents, Fauci has been described as “a consistent spokesperson for science, a person who more than any other figure has brokered a generational peace” between the two worlds of science and politics.

On October 16, 2014, in a United States Congressional hearing regarding the Ebola virus crisis, Fauci, who, as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) had been discussing the importance of screening for weeks, testified that NIAID was still some distance away from producing sufficient quantities of cures or vaccines for widespread trials. Specifically, Fauci said, “While NIAID is an active participant in the global effort to address the public health emergency occurring in west Africa, it is important to recognize that we are still in the early stages of understanding how infection with the Ebola virus can be treated and prevented.”

In addition to receiving an honorary degree in 2015, Fauci was invited to deliver guest remarks on May 21, 2020, for the Johns Hopkins University Class of 2020. Other notable guest speakers during the virtual ceremony included Reddit co-founder and commencement speaker Alexis Ohanian; philanthropist and former New York City mayor Michael R. Bloomberg; and senior class president Pavan Patel.

In March, he predicted that the infection fatality rate would likely be close to 1%, which was ten times more severe than the 0.1% reported rate for seasonal flu. On March 29, 2020, Fauci argued for the extension of the initial 15-day self-isolation guidelines, issued by the executive office, to at least until the end of April 2020. In mid-April, Fauci stated that if the administration had “started mitigation earlier,” more lives could have been saved, and “no one is going to deny that.” He added that the decision-making for implementing mitigation measures was “complicated,” and “there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then.”

On July 6, 2020, Fauci spoke on a Facebook livestream, offering his opinion that the country’s situation as pertaining to COVID-19 “is really not good,” pointing to more than 55,000 new cases on July 4, 2020. The United States was “still knee-deep in the first wave” of cases, and was experiencing a “resurgence of infections,” stated Fauci. On July 7, 2020, during a press conference, Fauci stated that it was a “false narrative to take comfort in a lower rate of death” for COVID-19 in the country: “There’s so many other things that are very dangerous and bad about this virus, don’t get yourself into false complacency.” Both Trump and the White House had cited the falling death rate as proof of success of the Trump administration’s response. After this appearance by Fauci, the White House cancelled three scheduled media appearances by Fauci due later that week. On July 7, 2020, Trump contradicted Fauci’s comments describing a dire situation in the country, with Trump saying: “I think we are in a good place. I disagree with [Fauci].” While there have been disagreements, Trump has also praised Fauci.

On July 9, 2020, Trump publicly claimed that Fauci “made a lot of mistakes.” By July 12, 2020, a White House official told media outlets that “several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things,” passing to the media on a list of purported mistakes made by Fauci during the outbreak. One of the supposed mistakes highlighted was Fauci’s February 29, 2020, statement in an interview that “at this moment, there is no need to change anything that you’re doing on a day-by-day basis.” However, the White House list neglected to mention that in that same interview, Fauci had stated that the risk could change, “when you start to see community spread,” and that the disease could morph into “a major outbreak” in the country.

In October 2020, Fauci objected after his words “I can’t imagine that anybody could be doing more” were featured in an advertisement from the Trump campaign touting Trump’s handling of the pandemic. Fauci said he did not consent to the ad, his words were taken out of context (he was actually referring to how hard the Coronavirus Task Force was working), and he had never made a political endorsement in his career.

On October 18, 2020 Fauci mentioned that he “wasn’t surprised” Donald Trump contracted coronavirus. The next day, during a presidential call, Trump called Fauci “a disaster” and said that “people are tired of COVID.” During a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona on October 19, Trump has launched attacks on his political rival Joe Biden where he said that Biden “wants to listen to Dr. Fauci” in reference to the COVID-19 pandemic response, upon which Biden merely replied “…yes” on Twitter. On October 31, the Washington Post published an extensive interview of Fauci, in which he voiced a candid assessment of the administration’s coronavirus policies and was critical of the influence of presidential advisor Scott Atlas.