History

 James B. Duke makes an additional bequest to establish the Duke School of Medicine, Duke School of Nursing, and Duke Hospital, with the goal of improving health care in the Carolinas and nationwide.

The School of Medicine opened for classes on October 2. Demand was very high: 3,000 prospective students sought enrollment. The new school accepted only the most outstanding applicants, and the first cohort numbered 70: 52 first-year students and 18 third-year students from seven different two-year medical schools.

Established: 1930. Name changed to the Department of Microbiology and Immunology when combined with the Division of Immunology in 1964. Re-established as the Department of Microbiology when the Department of Immunology was formed in 1992. Merged with the Department of Genetics to form the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology in 2002.

The brain tumor program at Duke is founded by Barnes Woodhall, MD, as one of the first brain tumor research and clinical programs in the United States. In the 1950s Woodhall becomes one of the first physicians to use chemotherapy on brain tumors. 

Duke met the urgent need for medical expertise during World War II by establishing the Duke 65th General Hospital in Suffolk, England. Staffed entirely by Duke faculty, alumni, and trainees, the 65th cared for sick and wounded Allied soldiers and airmen. The hospital treated some 17,250 patients, many of them with severe injuries, with an astonishingly low mortality rate of 0.4%. “The entire country has good reason to be proud of the fine work” the Duke team contributed to the war effort, said U.S. Surgeon General Norman T. Kirk. “Faithful effort put in by the 65th on apparently hopeless cases has resulted in saving many lives.

Psychiatrist Ewald W. Busse establishes the Duke University Center for Aging, the first research center of its kind in the nation. Now the oldest continuously running aging center in the United States, the Duke Center for Aging has pioneered long-term studies of health problems among the elderly.

Wilhelm Delano Meriwether, MD’67, became the School of Medicine’s first Black student in 1963, and four years later graduated with honors as its first Black MD, paving the way for students from all backgrounds to learn and grow at Duke. He went on to lead the U.S. Public Health Service’s swine flu vaccination campaign and provide missionary health care in South Africa.

Dr. Eugene A. Stead Jr., then-chairman of the Department of Medicine in the Duke University School of Medicine, started the nation's first physician assistant educational program, a two-year curriculum to train people to fill a societal need for more medical practitioners, and expand the prior education and experience of ex-military corpsmen.

Irwin Fridovich, PhD, and graduate student Joe McCord discover the enzyme superoxide dismutase, which protects all living things against the toxicity of oxygen.

Ophthalmic Technician Program trains Ophthalmic Technicians (OpTechs), who work closely with ophthalmologists, to assist in caring for patients with eye diseases or injuries
 

Duke biophysicist Jane Richardson’s ribbon diagram, a method of representing the 3D structure of proteins, is first published.

Science's 'Mother of Ribbon Diagram' Celebrates 50 years at Duke

Duke becomes one of two hospitals to conduct the first human clinical trials of AZT, the first drug to substantially improve quality of life for AIDS patients.

Ralph Snyderman, MD,  served as dean of Duke University School of Medicine and the first chancellor for health affairs. He oversaw the development of the Duke University Health System, and served as its first president and chief executive officer. 

1989 - 2001

Led by Barton F. Haynes, MD, HS’73-’75, the Duke Human Vaccine Institute was formed in 1990 to support interdisciplinary efforts across Duke to develop vaccines and therapeutics for HIV/AIDS and other emerging infections. In the years since, DHVI has become one of the world’s foremost research institutions in the battle against infectious diseases.

Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center (now Duke Cancer Institute) develops the nation’s first outpatient bone marrow transplantation program.

Pediatric immunologist Louise Markert, MD, PhD, uses thymus transplantation to cure once-fatal complete DiGeorge Syndrome. 

Although the inception of the DCRI dates to 1969 with the formation of the Duke Databank for Cardiovascular Disease, the DCRI as it is known today was formally created in 1996, with Robert M. Califf, MD, serving as the first executive director. The DCRI works to develop, share, and implement knowledge that improves health around the world through innovative clinical research. 
 

DCRI Celebrates 25 Years

Edward W. Holmes Dean of the School of Medicine and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs.

1999-2000

R. Sanders Williams appointed Dean of the School of Medicine and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. Dr. Williams is also the founding dean of the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore that was established during his tenure.

2001 - 2007

Researchers at Duke and Vanderbilt universities discover the first major gene known to determine an individual’s risk for developing age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of visual impairment and legal blindness in the  elderly.

Duke University and the FDA co-founded the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative (CTTI), a public-private partnership designed to create new solutions for better, more efficient clinical trials; DCRI serves as the host of CTTI. 

The Department of Dermatology is established. Russel Hall, MD named chair.

A team of scientists from Duke and Johns Hopkins universities identify mutations in a gene that make cells immortal and appear to play a pivotal role in three of the most common types of brain tumors, as well as cancers of the liver, tongue and urinary tract.

Robert J. Lefkowitz MD, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Brian K. Kobilka of Stanford University School of Medicine, who was a post-doctoral fellow in Lefkowitz's lab in the 1980s. They were recognized for their work on a class of cell surface receptors that have become the target of prescription drugs, including antihistamines, ulcer drugs and beta blockers to relieve hypertension, angina and coronary disease.

Robert J. Lefkowitz's Nobel Page

Jeffery Lawson, MD, PhD, and Laura Niklason, MD, PhD, develop a bioengineered blood vessel, which Lawson grafts into an artery in a patient’s arm, the first in-human procedure of its kind in the U.S.

A Duke surgical team implanted North Carolina’s first “bionic eye.”

Paul Modrich, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator was one of 3 recipients of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for mechanistic studies of DNA repair. According to the Nobel Foundation, their work has provided fundamental knowledge of how a living cell functions and is, for instance, used for the development of new cancer treatments.

Paul Modrich's Nobel Page

The project is part of a $157 million federal initiative aimed at studying how environmental factors affect childhood health (ECHO).

The Center for Population Health Sciences was elevated to department status, effective July 1, 2017. Lesley Curtis, PhD, director of the center, assumed the role of interim chair.

In a study using mice bred to have peanut allergies, Duke researchers were able to reprogram the animals' immune systems using a nanoparticle delivery of molecules to the lymph nodes that switched off the life-threatening reactions to peanut exposures.

A donor’s altruism leads to the nation’s second HIV-positive live kidney transplant.

The School of Medicine launched its new “Patient First” curriculum, that puts students in the clinic earlier and trains them in social determinants of health, data science, and leadership.

DCRI received a $50 million PCORI grant for the Healthcare Worker Exposure Response and Outcomes (HERO) research program and received a $80 million NIH grant for RADx-UP, both research programs that will study the prevention and testing of COVID-19, respectively DCRI is Duke University’s top awardee for federal COVID-19 research funding.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has awarded $17.5 million over three years to the Duke Human Vaccine Institute to develop a vaccine that protects against multiple types of coronaviruses and viral variants.

The Division of Emergency Medicine within the Department of Surgery in the Duke University School of Medicine was elevated to department status, effective July 1, 2022. Charles (Chuck) J. Gerardo, MD, chief of the division, assumed the role of interim chair.

Duke Health enacted a historic realignment by establishing the Duke Health Integrated Practice. The new model brings the clinical practice, which previously operated as a separate for-profit enterprise, into alignment with the research, education, and community partnership missions, creating a unified, integrated academic health system that will better serve patients, communities, faculty, and staff.

Klotman’s appointment, effective July 1, 2023, follows a restructuring of the leadership model for Duke Health’s academic and clinical missions.

In 2024, Duke University launches a celebration of its centennial—a historic opportunity to recognize Duke’s extraordinary past, communicate the impact of the present and look toward the potential of Duke’s future