Discussion - Author Jeanne Guillemin to Discuss “American Anthrax”

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In October 2001, anthrax spores mailed to selected targets shook a nation already in turmoil following the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Jeanne Guillemin, author of “American Anthrax: Fear, Crime and the Investigation of the Nation’s Deadliest Bioterrorist Attack” (2011), will discuss the case in a lecture sponsored by the Library’s Science, Technology and Business Division, the lecture is free and open to the public. No tickets are needed. A book signing will follow.

The targets of the anthrax attacks, which killed five and infected 17, included the office of a photo editor at American Media, Inc., congressional offices and an NBC News office. According to Guillemin, the FBI’s investigation of the source of the attacks was among the most complex in its history, lasting for seven years.

Guillemin is a senior adviser to the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She studied social psychology at Harvard as an undergraduate and completed her doctorate degree in sociology and medical anthropology at Brandeis University. Guillemin has done research on infectious diseases and biological weapons throughout her career.

Books written by Guillemin include “Anthrax: The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak” (1999), which documents the inquiry into the controversial cause of the 1979 Sverdlovsk anthrax outbreak in the former Soviet Union, and “Biological Weapons: The History of State-Sponsored Programs and Contemporary Bioterrorism” (2005), which covers the biological weapons history of several countries.