NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: American physician-scientist and immunologist Dr Anthony Fauci is 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m/170 cm) tall, and was part of his high school's basketball and baseball teams.

Despite being only 5 ft 7 in tall, Fauci captained the basketball team at Regis High School, a demanding Jesuit institution on Manhattan's Upper East Side, he revealed in an interview with CBS News.

Fauci was chief medical advisor to the president from 2021 to 2022 and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) from 1984 to 2022.

Anthony Fauci's unusual height and basketball

Fauci captained the basketball team for Regis High School in 1958 before taking charge of the country's response to the coronavirus outbreak.

The Regis High School basketball team had a 1-16 record when they approached a rival school's gym in the winter of 1958, expecting to go home with yet another defeat.

Regis was eventually commanded by the diminutive future physician who would later head the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

According to a Wall Street Journal article, Fauci debuted as the point guard for a losing basketball team in 1958.

Fauci's friends said he could "dribble the ball through a brick wall" despite his short stature of 5 ft 7 in.

According to lore, Fauci led Regis to a road game against Fordham Prep, a team who had just defeated them by 16 points a few weeks prior.

The scouting report on
Fauci stated: "Classic point guard, excellent ballhandler, pesky defender. Six of his classmates and teammates described him as a tenacious competitor in short shorts and striped socks whose feistiness on the court defied some parts of his personality and reflected others," as per the WSJ article.

Is Anthony Fauci taller than his wife Christine Grady?

As per multiple sources, Dr Fauci's wife Grady is 5 ft 8 in (1.73 m/173 cm) tall, making her an inch taller than her "point guard" husband.

Grady is an American nurse and bioethicist who serves as the director of the Department of Bioethics of the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center.

What did Anthony Fauci discover?

Dr Fauci made significant discoveries about how HIV weakens the body's defenses, making it vulnerable to fatal diseases. He also played an integral role in the creation of therapies that let HIV-positive individuals live long, healthy lives.

His abilities, meanwhile, were put to the test by the COVID-19 epidemic. After Joe Biden was inaugurated as president in 2021, Fauci was appointed as his chief medical advisor.

Fauci contributed to the fight against many other diseases throughout the course of his more than 40 years in the public sector, addressing epidemics of the West Nile virus and Ebola in particular.