Howard Dean is an American politician from the state of Vermont. He is best known for making a run at the American presidency through the primaries of the 2004 election.

Howard Dean III was born in Town of East Hampton, New York on November 17, 1948. He has three siblings. He and his family spent a lot of time in East Hampton, where the family had a home on Hook Pond. In New York, the lived on the Upper East Side. He attended the Browning School in Manhattan and later St. George's School in Rhode Island. He went on to attend Yale University where he joined the Zeta Psi fraternity. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science in 1971. Because of an unfused vertebra he was deferred from the military draft. He eventually decided on a career in medicine and enrolled in pre-med at Columbia University. He later transferred to Albert Einstein College of Medicine where he received his medical degree in 1978. He began a residency at the University of Vermont.

In 1981, he marred Judith Steinberg. They began a family medical practice in Burlington, Vermont. His wife has been very much in the background of his political life, preferring instead to focus on the medical practice. They have two children.

Howard Dean became an early frontrunner in the 2004 Democratic Presidential nomination because of his stance on the 2003 Iraq invasion, however he ultimately lost the nomination to Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. He was elected chairman of the Democratic National Convention in 2005.