Robinson, G. Canby, Vertical File

George Canby Robinson (1878-1960) was the former chair of the Department of Medicine and dean of Vanderbilt Medical School who transformed the school in the 1920s by changing the faculty from private physicians to full-time academic professors and leading the efforts in building a brand new medical campus for Vanderbilt University.

Robinson held a medical degree from Johns Hopkins University and served in a variety of positions before being hired by Vanderbilt in 1920. He was a resident pathologist and physician in Philadelphia in the early years of the 1900s and then turned to medical education as an associate professor at the Rockefeller Institute in 1910. From 1913 to 1920, Robinson was an associate professor of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis.

At Vanderbilt, Robinson was able to convince the university that it would be more beneficial to build a new campus for the medical school rather than improve and enlarge the buildings on South Campus. Despite concerns, Robinson was able to raise 7 million dollars, including the largest single grant given to a medical school at the time, to start construction on the new medical school on West Campus. It took four years to complete, but Robinson used the time well. He served as a temporary head of the Johns Hopkins Department of Medicine, toured German and English medical schools, and purchased books and journals for the medical library. He also oversaw the selection of the first physicians to become full-time faculty at the school and sent them to European medical schools to study their education methods. The Vanderbilt Hospital and Medical School opened in 1925.

In 1927, he left Vanderbilt for the position of Director of the new Cornell Medical School, and retired in 1955. Robinson passed away in 1960.