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M. Kenton King (1924-2009) became the first full-time dean of Washington University School of Medicine in 1965, a position he retained until his retirement in 1989 and thereby making him one of the longest-serving Medical School deans in the United States. His tenure brought much acclaim to the School of Medicine both academically, with the recruitment of new heads in every department, and physically, with the addition of the McDonnell Medical Sciences Building, Clinical Sciences Research Building, Becker Medical Library, and the renovation of the East Building. King's leadership also affected the composition of the student body as his recruitment efforts brought more minority and female students to Washington University.

Born on November 13, 1924, in Oklahoma City, King began his undergraduate studies at the University of Oklahoma. World War II interrupted his academic pursuits when he joined the U.S. Navy in 1943. He participated in the Battle of Okinawa and attained the rank of lieutenant prior to his discharge in 1946. A year later, King earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Oklahoma and decided to attend Vanderbilt University's School of Medicine on the G.I. Bill. He graduated in 1951, ranked seventh in his class. King then completed an internship and a residency at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, becoming chief resident in 1955. When his mentor, W. Barry Wood, transferred to Johns Hopkins University in 1955, King followed and completed a fellowship in microbiology. He returned to Washington University in 1957 as a member of the preventive medicine faculty and head of the Student Health Service.

King's administrative contributions to Washington University School of Medicine began as associate dean in 1961, until he was promoted to dean of the School of Medicine in 1965. In 1967, he also became the first Danforth Professor of Medicine and Public Health. King met his wife, June Greenfield King, at Barnes Hospital. A 1951 graduate of the Washington University School of Nursing, June was also the head nurse on a Barnes Hospital medical and surgical ward. After his retirement in 1989, King remained active in university affairs, organizing the School of Medicine's 100th anniversary celebration in 1991. King died on October 15, 2009.

Rita Levi-Montalcini was born in Turin, Italy, and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Turin Medical School in 1936 despite her father's objections to her enrolling in college and his his belief that women should not pursue careers. Levi-Montalcini completed a specialized degree in neurology and psychiatry in 1940 but was forced to conduct research from her bedroom due to the Fascist laws preventing Italian Jews from practicing medicine or working in universities at that time.

After the war, Levi-Montalcini returned to work as an assistant at the University of Turin Institute of Anatomy. In 1947 she accepted an invitation to collaborate as a research associate with Viktor Hamburger, head of the Zoology Department of Washington University in St. Louis, who had been interested in articles she published in foreign scientific journals. Levi-Montalcini only planned on staying at Washington University for less than one year and ended up staying for 30 years. She became an associate professor of Zoology in 1951, and a full professor in 1958. Levi-Montalcini began dividing her time between St. Louis and Rome in the early 1960s, and established a joint research program between Washington University and the Higher Institute of Health in Rome from 1961-1969. She retired as professor emeritus of Biology in 1977.

Rita Levi-Montalcini shares the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1986 with Stanely Cohen for their discoveries of growth factors that expand our understanding of deformities, senile-dementia, delayed wound healing, and tumor diseases. Levi-Montalcini received many additional honors and awards throughout her career, including the Max Weinstein Award given by the United Cerebral Palsy Association in 1963. Levi-Montalcini was the first woman to receive this award. Levi-Montalcini died in Rome, Italy in 2012 at 103 years old, becoming the longest-living Nobel Laureate.

St. Louis Medical College was chartered in 1841 as the medical department of St. Louis University. The university appointed the first faculty, but allowed them to be governed by an autonomous, nonsectarian Board of Trustees. Instruction began in October 1842 in a small building that was owned by the first dean, James Vance Prather, located on Washington Avenue near Tenth Street and adjacent to the university buildings. In 1849 the college moved to a neoclassical style building at Clark Avenue and Seventh Street built by the financier John O'Fallon. Despite the nonsectarian board, public pressure -- particularly from the extreme nativist movement, the so-called "Know Nothing" party -- demanded that the department sever ties with the Roman Catholic university. In 1855, the state of Missouri granted the college a charter as an independent institution.

In the 1850s and 1860s St. Louis Medical College was so dominated by one man, the second dean, Charles Alexander Pope that it was commonly referred to as "Pope's College." There was some literal truth to the name, because Pope owned the Seventh Street building outright. On Pope's death in 1870, his colleagues were forced as a group to raise funds to buy the facility. That group organized under the name of the Medical Fund Society of St. Louis.

In the 1870s the curriculum of the college was reformed and expanded. By 1880, all students were required to matriculate for three years before receiving a diploma. In 1891, St. Louis Medical College became affiliated with Washington University and was designated its medical department. For eight more years, however, the old name was maintained, and the medical school was known jointly as the Washington University Medical Department and Saint Louis Medical College. This dual name was dropped only when the Missouri Medical College affiliated with the university in 1899.

In 1892 the Medical Fund Society and Washington University sponsored the construction of a new facility at 1804 Locust Street. The building was praised for being "commodious and well planned." But less than twenty years later, the same building was devastatingly criticized by Abraham Flexner in his famous report to the Carnegie Commission. With the reorganization of Washington University School of Medicine in 1910, most of the remaining traditions of St. Louis Medical College were abandoned in the interests of progressive medical education.

Nu Sigma Nu is an international professional fraternity for medicine. The Pi chapter of the Nu Sigma Nu was a student medical fraternity located at the Washington University School of Medicine. The chapter was a first a local medical fraternity of the Missouri Medical College begun in 1898. In 1900, Alpha Kappa Phi became the Pi chapter of a national fraternity, Nu Sigma Nu. The Washington university chapter had an enthusiatic alumni club in the early years besides its active or student chapter. In its heyday, it maintained a large residential chapter house on Forest Park Boulevard. Nu Sigma Nu's last members graduated with class of 1972 and met at Olin Residence Hall. When the chapter residence was sold, Cecil H. Charles, an active alumnus established a fund which paid expenses for many years. In 1972 when the chapter dissolved, the funds assets were transferred to the Medical School to form the Cecil M. Charles, Nu Sigma Nu Medical Scholarship Fund.

Edgar Monsanto Queeny was an American industrialist. He was the son of Olga Mendez Monsanto and John Francis Queeny, the founder of Monsanto. He followed his father as chairman of the Monsanto corporation from 1928 until his retirement in 1960. He then became the chair of the board of trustees of Barnes Hospital. His efforts to modernize the hospital and the Washington University Medical Center led to the construction of Queeny Tower as well as a dispute between the hospital and Washington University. The resolution of this dispute led to closer ties between the School of Medicine and its associated hospitals. He was also a conservationist and amateur naturalist and photographer.

Max A. Goldstein (1870-1941) was born in St. Louis and received his medical degree in 1892 from the Missouri Medical College, a precursor institution to Washington University School of Medicine. After an internship at St. Louis City Hospital, Dr. Goldstein traveled to Berlin, Strasbourg, London and Vienna as part of a grand tour to complete his medical training. His interest in otology, a new and promising field, led him to the internationally renowned Vienna Polyclinic to study with Dr. Adam Politzer (1835-1920), "father of modern otology." While in Vienna, Dr. Goldstein heard a series of lectures presented by Dr. Victor Urbantschitsch (1847-1921), a proponent of aural training for congenitally deaf children, and observed how deaf children could be taught speech by using acoustic training methods to stimulate dormant auditory senses.

Dr. Goldstein returned to St. Louis in 1895 to establish his medical practice. Within a year, Goldstein was appointed chair of Otology at Beaumont Medical College, an appointment that continued until 1912. In 1896 Goldstein founded a new medical journal, The Laryngoscope; he served as its editor from its first issue until his death in 1941. At the behest of Dr. Victor Urbantschitsch, Goldstein began teaching a class of sixteen girls at the St. Joseph's Institute for the Deaf using the Urbantschitsch acoustic training methods and provided instruction for teachers on how to apply these methods. These teaching sessions for deaf children and teachers of the deaf led to the idea of establishing an institute for the deaf in which an effective cooperation between teachers, otologists, and other specialties would develop. In 1914, Dr. Goldstein founded Central Institute for the Deaf (CID) in the rooms above his medical office. The first class consisted of four children and within two years construction began on a new separate school building.

By 1930, CID expanded to include a clinic for rehabilitation of deaf adults and research laboratories where scientists were recruited world-wide to study deafness. The teacher training program was affiliated with Washington University in 1931, the first deaf education program in the country affiliated with a university. Dr. Goldstein was made professor of research otology and speech pathology at Washington University that same year. He remained director of CID and professor until his death in 1941. By the time of Goldstein's death, CID had established an international reputation, with an enrollment of 300 students from the U.S. and several foreign countries.

Dr. Goldstein was also an avid collector of mechanical hearing devices including the first models of commercially made devices. The CID-Goldstein Historic Devices for Hearing Collection contains over 400 hearing devices dating from 1796 and represents one of the largest collections in the world. Associated with the collection is archival material dating from the 19th century including patents, photographic prints, catalog illustrations, advertisements, and related ephemera. In addition to collecting hearing devices, Dr. Goldstein collected rare books dealing with communication and disorders of the ear, nose and throat. The CID-Goldstein Collection in Speech and Hearing contains over 700 rare books on the fields of otology, deaf education and speech defects. Both collections are housed at Bernard Becker Medical Library.

Among his many achievements was the founding of The Society of Progressive Oral Advocates in 1918, an organization devoted to oral education of the deaf, and serving as editor of Oralism and Auralism, its official publication. He also founded the St. Louis League of Hard of Hearing, now known as the St. Louis Hearing-Speech Center. Dr. Goldstein was awarded the Gold Medal by the American Laryngological, Rhinological and Otological Society in recognition of his work in the education of the deafened child, the St. Louis Award for his great contributions to humanity, and an honorary LLD degree from Washington University. Dr. Goldstein passed away in July 1941 at the age of 71.

William Cullen was a Scottish physician and professor of medicine, best known for his innovative teaching methods amd forceful inspiring lectures, which drew medical students to Edinburgh from throughout the English-speaking world. During the period of these lectures, he was at the University of Edinburgh. A more detailed biographical sketch may be found at "William Cullen." Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 04 Sep. 2013. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/146062/William-Cullen

Oliver H. Lowry was born in Chicago and received his master's degree and doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Chicago. He initially lectured at Harvard Medical School, where in 1939 he published his first scientific paper. He worked at the Public Health Research Institute of the City of New York from 1942 to 1947, then moved to Washington University, where he headed the department of pharmacology for the next 29 years and, in the late 1950's, was also dean of the medical school. Also in the 1950's, Lowry found a way of isolating, preparing, weighing, and chemically studying single nerve cells and sub-cellular particles. He pioneered freeze-drying methods to preserve cells and invented a micro-balance that could register less than a millionth of a gram.

Dr. Lowry's early paper on the measurement of protein became one of the most frequently cited studies in scientific literature. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1957 and to the National Academy of Sciences in 1964. He retired a distinguished professor emeritus of molecular biology and phamacology. Source: New York Times, July 4, 1996.

C. Barber Mueller was born in Carlinville, Illinois and earned his medical degree at Washington University School of Medicine in 1942. After completing a surgical internship at Barnes Hospital, Meuller spent three years with the 4th U.S. Marine Division in the Pacific Theater and won a bronze star and two Purple Hearts. When he returned from overseas, Mueller first completed a Rockefeller Fellowship in biochemistry at Harvard Medical School, then a surgical residency at Barnes Hospital. Mueller was Evarts Graham's last chief resident.

After completion of his residency, Mueller was appointed as a full-time faculty member at Washington University School of Medicine in 1951. In 1956, Mueller moved to Syracuse, New York as a Professor of Surgery and Department Chairman at the State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical Center. Mueller moved to Ontario, Canada in 1967 to take a position as Professor of Surgery and Department Chairman at McMaster University. He became an emeritus professor at McMaster in 1983.

Benjamin Milder was born in 1915 in St. Louis, Missouri. He graduated from Washington University School of Medicine in 1939, where he served as a longtime clinician and teacher in the department of ophthalmology.

Samuel Soule was a 1923 graduate of the St. Louis College of Pharmacy, and a 1928 graduate of the Washington University School of Medicine. He completed his residency at Barnes Hospital, as was appointed assistant obstetrician-gynecologist in 1932. He served on the faculty of Washington University's department of obstetrics and gynecology until his retirement in 1979.
-- In Memorium SAMUEL D. SOULE, M.D. 216 Jewish Hospital of St. Louis, November-December 1986, inside front cover. https://beckerarchives.wustl.edu/RG025-S09-ss03-B65-F04-i06

William Don Owens, M.D. is a clinically oriented anesthesiologist with strong interests in teaching and clinical outcomes research. He earned his M.D. from the University of Michigan in 1965. Following a tour of duty with the U.S. Navy in anesthesiology, he trained in anesthesiology at Massachusetts General Hospital before serving on the faculty at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Owens came to Washington University in 1973. He became full professor in 1981, and he served as chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology from 1982-1992. During this period, he was also anesthesiologist-in-chief for Barnes's and Children's Hospital. In 1998, Owens served as president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA). He became emeritus professor at Washington University in 2004.

Steven J. Rose (1939-1989); was Associate Professor and Director of of the Program in Physical Therapy at Washington University School of Medicine; received his bachelor's degree in physical therapy from Ithaca College/Albert Einstein College of Medicine and a doctorate in neuroscience from Yeshiva University/Albert Einstein College of Medicine; served as an Associate Editor and then as Editor of Physical Therapy from 1986 until his death in 1989.
--Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis website, viewed May 9, 2016