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The department was created as a result of the 1910 Flexner Report, which called for a complete overhaul of medical education in the United States. In response to this report, Joseph Erlanger was recruited to Washington University, where he served as Head of the Department of Physiology for 35 years until his retirement in 1946. Dr. Erlanger, together with his former student, Herbert Spencer Gasser, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1944 for the introduction of the oscilloscope to study electrical activity in the nerve, a technical breakthrough that led ultimately to the measurement of ionic currents and the mechanism of action potential.

The name of the department changed to the Department of Physiology and Biophysics under the leadership of Harvey White (1947-1964), John Josse (1964-1966) and Carlton C. Hunt (1967-1983). Beginning with Philip Stahl’s tenure (1984-2011), the department was called by its current name: Cell Biology and Physiology. Helen Piwnica-Worms assumed the position as head of this department on March 1, 2011., and it is currently headed by David W. Piston, PhD.

Formerly the Department of Pharmacology (1900-1990) and the Department of Molecular Biology and Pharmacology (1991-2007), the Department of Developmental Biology was renamed again in 2008.

The Division of Medical Genetics was established as a result of a $1.4 million donation from James S. McDonnell in 1967. This followed a 1964 grant to Dr. William Sly, the head of the genetics program, which was used to study genetic mechanisms. The department was considered part of the Department of Internal Medicine and housed within the McDonnell Medical Science Building, also named for the McDonnell family as a result of a $4.7 million donation. The establishment of the department was celebrated by a lecture series titled “Genetics and the Space Age,” and Drs. William Sly and David L. Rimoin were directors.

Washington University School of Medicine became the eighth university in the country to have a genetics department. In addition to the academic program within the Department of Internal Medicine, a Genetics Counseling clinic was founded in conjunction with Children’s Hospital in 1967 using funding from a United States Public Health Service grant. When the grant funding ended in 1970, the Ranken Jordan Trust Fund began supporting the clinic and department on a smaller scale. In 1975, a four-year research grant was awarded to Dr. Sly, now promoted to professor, for continuing his research on enzymes and genetics.

The department of medicine was inherited from the St. Louis Medical College when that institution affiliated with Washington University in 1891 to become the university's medical school. Following the publication of the Flexner Report, the department was reorganized in 1910, and George Dock, MD was recruited to Washington University to become the first full-time head of medicine at the university. Dock, who also served briefly as Dean of the medical school from 1910-1912, oversaw the move from the former educational and clinical buildings in downtown St. Louis to the new, present-day medical campus along Kingshighway Avenue in 1915.

The department was endowed in 1916 by John T. Milliken. This endowment provided sufficient funding for additional full-time faculty who could divide their time between clinical work at Barnes Hospital located on the new medical campus, teaching, and research without the need to depend on private practice for their income. For over a century, the department of medicine developed a strong tradition of research and discovery in the basic, clinical and translational sciences. Today, Washington University's department of medicine is a recognized leader in clinical care, teaching and research.

The Department of Molecular Microbiology originated from the university’s former Department of Bacteriology and Preventive Medicine. Nobel Prize winner Arthur Kornberg became chairman of the newly designated Department of Microbiology in 1953. The department moved into new labs within the McDonnell Medical Sciences Building in 1970, and changed its name in 1975 to the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. The department was again renamed in 1989 as the Department of Molecular Microbiology.

Although now separated into standalone departments within the Washington University School of Medicine, neurology and neurosurgery came together as one department in 1974 when the neurosurgery division of the school's surgery department joined the neurology department. During this time, the department had two chairmen. William Landau, MD remained head of neurology, and Sidney Goldring, MD became head of neurosurgery. The two served as co-chair of the newly named Department of Neurology and Neurological Surgery. The arrangement of having two chairmen for the department lasted until 2002, when neurology and neurosurgery separated to become independent departments within the medical school.

Washington University's department of neurology became an independent department within the medical school in 1963 under chairman James O'Leary. Prior to that time, neurology had been a paired with several other departments within the university, including the former Department of Psychiatry and Neurology, the former Department of Neuropsychiatry, and as a division within the medicine department.

In 1910, Ernest Sachs, MD was recruited to Washington University to develop neurosurgery at the medical school. Although initially a member of the department of surgery, Sachs was named professor of neurosurgery in 1919, the first professorship in the world in this developing specialty. Sachs established a training program in neurosurgery at Barnes Hospital, which became an integral part of the development of this specialty in the United States.

In 1946, Sachs retired as chief of neurosurgery and was succeeded by Henry G. Schwartz, MD. Schwartz was a superb clinical surgeon who was extremely interested in the training of residents. He fostered strong ties to the neurology service and the basic neuroscience programs, and under his leadership, the neurosurgical program developed a strong commitment to basic and clinical research. Many of his trainees continued in academic neurosurgery and became leaders in the specialty.

Washington University School of Medicine was established in 1891 when the St. Louis Medical College became the medical department of Washington University. When Missouri Medical College joined the department in 1899, the school's department of obstetrics was founded, with Dr. Henry Schwarz serving as its first head.

In 1921, gynecologic surgery was restructured as a division with the Department of Surgery, but it recombined with obstetrics in July of 1929, forming an independent Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Dr. Otto Schwarz, son of Henry Schwarz, became the newly combined ob/gyn department's first full-time chair. A master clinician, on retiring from academic medicine in 1940 he rejoined the clinical staff to continue research and practice.

Source: https://obgyn.wustl.edu/about/history/

The Washington University School of Medicine formally established the Department of Ophthalmology in 1928 with Harvey J. Howard, M.D. as the first full time chairman. That same year, the funds bequeathed by Mrs. Eliza McMillan (approximately $1.2 million) became available following her death in 1915. Alongside a donation from the Oscar Johnson family of about $500,000 for the establishment of a research and teaching institute for diseases of the eye, ear, nose, and throat, Mrs. McMillan’s donation provided the funding for the construction of the McMillan Hospital. The building opened in 1930, but was unfinished until 1943. A 1961 remodel of the Eye Clinic on the 7th floor of McMillan Hospital brought about greater resources for patients and faculty alike in the department of ophthalmology. The Hospital housed the ophthalmology department’s largest patient office for 58 years.

The department’s most notable faculty member is Dr. Bernard Becker, who became head of the department in 1953. In 1954, Dr. Bernard Becker developed the first orally-administered drugs for glaucoma, which was a research interest of his over the course of his tenure at WUSM. In 1967, the first Glaucoma Research center funded by the National Institute of Health was established with Dr. Becker. Bernard Becker’s achievements extended outside the realm of ophthalmology, as he also played a major role in the design and construction of the Medical Library on the Washington University Medical Campus, which was finished in 1989, and named after him in 1995. Dr. Becker was also a major contributor to the Becker Library’s Rare Books collections, having donated his own personal collection. Those materials, the Bernard Becker Collection in Ophthalmology and Optics, are now housed in Becker Library’s Archives and Rare Books Department.

The ophthalmology department received multiple grants throughout the 1980s, including annual grants from Research to Prevent Blindness, which in 1990 had accumulated to $601,900. Additionally, in 1983 the Storz Fellowships in Ophthalmology were established due to an endowment of $880,000.

In 1995, the retina service of Washington University merged with Retina Consultants to become the Barnes Retina Institute. The same year brought the publication of Dr. Benjamin Milder’s history of the ophthalmology department, "On the Shoulders of Giants". Dr. Milder was a St. Louis area ophthalmologist. The Center for Advanced Medicine was opened in 2001, and the ophthalmology clinical faculty moved to the new facility. In 2018, a donation of $10 million from a Washington University alumna, Jane Hardesty Poole, re-established the department of ophthalmology as the John F. Hardesty Department of Ophthalmology, after Poole’s father, the ophthalmologist Dr. John F. Hardesty. A list of department chairs from the beginning of the department in 1928 to the present is below.

1928-1933: Harvey J. Howard, M.D.
1933-1953: Dr. Lawrence T. Post
1953-1988: Dr. Bernard Becker
1988-1999: Dr. Henry Kaplan
1999-2014: Dr. Michael Kass
2014-Current: Todd P. Margolis, M.D., PhD

The Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery at Washington University in St. Louis has a rich, 130-year history of leadership in our field that is built on the foundations of academic medicine: patient care, research, training and service. Our past leaders include luminaries in the field of otolaryngology, such as John Blasdel Shapleigh, MD; Greenfield Sluder, MD; Lee Wallace Dean, MD; Theodore Walsh, MD; Joseph Ogura, MD; John Fredrickson, MD; Richard A. Chole, MD, PhD; and, presently, Craig A. Buchman, MD, FACS. Even from our earliest days, prior to the inception of the McMillan Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital (circa 1943), excellence has been an integral part of the department's fabric. A look at former faculty and program graduates reveals many of the true innovators in our field. While we remain humbled by our beginnings and past achievements, we choose not to rest on our laurels. Rather, we aspire to further our commitment to improving patients' lives by leading our field and its clinical application.
-- 2019-2020 Bulletin Overview: http://bulletin.wustl.edu/medicine/departments/otolaryngology/#text

The department was created in 1910 as the Department of Pathology with Dr. Eugene Opie serving as the first head of the department from 1910 to 1923. Today, the department is considered one of seven basic science departments of the School of Medicine, with a strong emphasis on immunology.

The Department of Pediatrics was made a part of the School of Medicine in 1891, when the St. Louis Medical College joined Washington University. The department, along with many university medical schools across the country, was reorganized in 1910 as a result of the Flexner Report. It was at this time that the Department gained its first residents in pediatrics.

In 1912, St. Louis Children’s Hospital officially affiliated with Washington University under the direction of department chairman Dr. Borden S. Veeder. The Pediatrics Department took control of the hospital’s clinical care. In 1917, W. McKim Marriott became the head of the department, and in 1919 he hired the Pediatrics Department’s first female faculty member, Kirsten Utheim Tovend.

Dr. Alexis F. Hartmann became department chair in 1936. In 1960, a new fellowship program for pediatrics residents was introduced, funded by the Dr. Herbert A. Mazur Children’s Fund. The program consisted of three years of funded study at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. 1964 began a ten-year process of donations from the Allen P. and Josephine B. Green Foundation for the development of a partnership between the Departments of Pediatrics and Neurology. The initial pledge consisted of $100,000 and by 1974 the fund had donated $500,000. Dr. David Goldring was department head during this time until 1966, when Dr. Philip R. Dodge took over. In 1967, Dr. Dodge was the 20th annual recipient of another ongoing donation process, this one from the Fern Waldman Memorial Fund in the amount of $5,000.

In 1986, Dr. Harvey R. Colten became the department chair, and under his leadership the Child Neurology division of the Pediatrics department was transferred to the Neurology Department. Dr. Alan L. Schwartz became head of the Department of Pediatrics in 1995. In that same year, the clinical labs established in 1912 at St. Louis Children’s Hospital were transferred completely from the Pediatrics Department to the Hospital. BJC Health Systems then integrated with Children’s Hospital. Dr. Schwartz served as department chair until 2015, when Dr. Gary A. Silverman took over leadership of the department.