Peter Berczeller was born in Austria in 1931. He spent part of his childhood in France, after the Nazis drove his family out of Austria. He lived in the United States for 50 years, and was a practicing internist in New York City for 32 of those years.

His book Doctors and Patients: What We Feel About You (Macmillan) gathered favorable notice, notably in the New York Times Book Review. He has also recently published a memoir, The Little White Coat, in German translation in Vienna.