Opening with 348 beds, including 50 private maternity rooms and 46 private NICU rooms, the $754 million C.S. Mott Children's Hospital and Von Voigtlander Women's Hospital is the largest and most sophisticated project in U-M history.
The new Brehm Tower at the W.K. Kellog Eye Center provides advanced eye care for a growing aging population and unites diabetes researchers as they search for a cure.
U-M launches the North Campus Research Complex, encompassing 28 buildings and over 2 million square feet of lab and office space.
Samuel and Jean Frankel Cardiovascular Center clinical building opens, providing a new home for much of U-M's heart, vascular, and stroke care for adult patients.
Providing state-of-the-art space for interdisciplinary research, the A. Alfred Taubman Biomedical Science Research Building opens.
Eva L. Feldman develops a clinical screening instrument used worldwide for the rapid diagnosis of diabetic neuropathy.
Arul M. Chinnaiyan and colleagues identify the gene that marks deadliest form of prostate cancer.
U-M establishes the nation's first comprehensive Depression Center, housed in the Rachel Upjohn Building on the East Medical Campus.
Jeffrey Punch and John Bromberg of the Department of Surgery perform the first successful liver transplant from a living donor, replacing a boys failed liver with 20% of an adult liver, donated by a family friend.
Gary Nabel and colleagues conduct the world's first human gene therapy protocol for AIDS.
Jeffrey Chamberlin and colleagues tranfer a normal copy of the dsystrophin gene into transgenic mice with Duchenne muscular dystrophy and obtain a fully corrected phenotype.
Antonia Novello (former U-M nephrology resident) becomes the first woman and first Hispanic surgeon general of the U.S.
Francis S. Collins and colleagues clone the genes responsible for cystic fibrosis. Collins will go on to discover the genes responsible for neurofibromatosis and help identify those for Huntington’s disease.
The U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center, one of only 41 U.S. centers to earn the National Cancer Institute's "comprehensive" designation, opens a state-of-the- art clinical and research facility adjacent to the University Hospital.
David Kuhl and his team develop single photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT) and positron emission tomography (PET).
Stanley Cohen, who received his doctorate from the U-M, shares the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in recognition of the discovery of nerve growth factor and epidermal growth factor.
The 11-story, 550-bed adult general University Hospital replaces the old University Hospital. The A. Alfred Taubman Health Care Center, which houses 120 outpatient clinics, is connected to the facility.
Survival Flight is launched. Averaging over a thousand missions each year, the U-M program transports patients in dire need of medical attention, as well as moves patients and organs between medical facilities.
U-M is one of the first medical centers to introduce the insulin pump.
Hamilton Smith, a former U-M postdoc, shares the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in recognition of the discovery of restriction enzymes and their application to problems of molecular genetics.
Robert Bartlett pioneers extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), technology used to support patients - primarily infants - with failing hearts or lungs.
Lazar Greenfield develops the Greenfield filter, a cone shaped stainless or titanium device that prevents blood clots from reaching the heart.
Robert Jaffe and A. Rees Midgley establish the Reproductive Sciences Program to address problems associated with infertility and reproductive endocrinology.
Marshall Nirenberg, who received his doctorate from the U-M, shares the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in recognition of the interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis.
The Lawrence D. Buhl Center for Research on Human Genetics, funded in part by the Buhl Foundation of Detroit with matching funds provided by the U.S. Public Health Service, is dedicated. Director James V. Neel deems the facility "one of the best equipped in the world in the field of human genetics."
Bennett Cohen, co-founder of the American College of Laboratory Animal Medicine, launches the nation's first laboratory animal medicine program. Cohen subsequently chaired the committee which wrote the first edition of The Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, now in its seventh edition and accepted as the primary reference in the field.
Medical Science 1 Building opens as the U-M Medical School makes sweeping changes to its curriculum, such as insuring that students have early clinical contact with patients and introducing interdepartmental courses in the neurosciences.
U-M Medical School researchers collaborate with School of Public Health colleagues on field trials of the ground-breaking Salk polio vaccine, one of the largest studies in history with over 1,800,000 children enrolled.
The first radioactive antibody to fight cancer administered anywhere in the world causes complete regression of a patient's melanoblastoma.
James V. Neel publishes "The Inheritance of Sickle Cell Anemia" in which he proposes that individuals with severe sickle cell anemia are homozygous for an abnormal gene and that carriers have one normal and one abnormal gene.
The Veterans Readjustment Center is established by the Department of Psychiatry to provide mental health services to ex-servicemen from World War II and help them to return to an active, normal civilian life.
The organization of the University of Michigan Base Hospital (General Hospital No. 298) is completed, where physicians and nurses are trained to serve in medical units during World War II.
U-M's Department of Human Heredity is one of the first genetic programs in the U.S.
Frank Wilson, a world-renowned cardiologist, plays a major role in transforming clinical cardiology by promoting the value of the electrocardiogram in the diagnosis of coronary artery disease.
Elizabeth C. Crosby is promoted to professor of anatomy, the first woman at the University of Michigan Medical School to hold this rank.
Albert C. Furstenberg begins 24 years as dean, the last dean to divide his efforts between departmental administration, private practice and direction of the Medical School.
Cameron Haight performs one of the first successful pneumonectomies in the world. In 1941, he will perform the world's first successful direct repair of esophageal atresia.
Frederick Coller after extensive studies with Eugene Potter on water and electrolyte balance in surgical patients, develops a formula soon used by surgeons around the world for replacing urinary losses of sodium, potassium and water.
Cyrus C. Sturgis is recruited from Harvard to become a professor of internal medicine and director of the Thomas Henry Simpson Memorial Institute for Medical Research.
In early August nearly 600 patients move into the new 724-bed University Hospital with its nine levels and two miles of corridors. When the beds in the older existing hospital buildings are included, total capacity is over 1,100.
Goiter is a growing public health problem, especially in the Great Lakes region. David Murray inroduces iodized salt as a goiter preventative and today the condition has been virtually eliminated in the United States.
Hugh Cabot, a graduate of the Harvard Medical School and a specialist in genitourinary surgery, joins the faculty as professor and director of surgery.
Alfred Scott Warthin persuades the regents to rule that all surgical specimens removed in University Hospital be turned over to the Department of Pathology, thus greatly increasing the number of autopsies and diagnostic cases undertaken.
Walter R. Parker establishes a formal training program in ophthalmology. Ophthalmological and Otolaryngological specialties expand rapidly after a well-equipped new building, known as the Eye and Ear Ward, opens on Catherine Street.
The U.S. medical community recognizes the U-M as the largest teaching hospital in the country.
Alice Hamilton, who will become the first woman on the Harvard faculty and who will help define the field of industrial medicine, receives her medical degree from Michigan.
Mary Stone, along with Ida Kahn, is the first Asian woman to earn a U-M medical degree.
George Dock joins Michigan's medical faculty and sets up a hospital laboratory in which he practices "clinical pathology."
U-M adopts the four-year medical school program still in use today.
Twin pavilions, housing a total of 60 beds and funded with a state appropriation and a contribution from the city of Ann Arbor, are added on to the already existing teaching hospital.
William Henry Fitzbutler, the son of a slave, is the first African American to graduate from the U-M Medical School.
U-M is the first state school to accept women on an equal basis with men. Amanda Sanford writes her thesis on childbed fever and is graduated with honors after one year.
U-M opens the first university hospital in the United States. The 20-bed facility is located in the residence of a former professor and has no wards or operating rooms.
Zina Pitcher conducts a summer clinical course in Detroit hospitals. Moses Gunn, also one of the original faculty members, continues to conduct his Wednesday and Saturday clinics in Ann Arbor.
The Medical Department graduates its first six students, all of whom entered with advanced standing, having already served an apprenticeship to a practicing physician.
The U-M Medical Department opens its doors to more than 100 students. They are charged $5 a year for two years of education.
The Board of Regents, including physician Zina Pitcher, establishes a three-member medical department, known today at the University of Michigan Medical School.