History
The university can trace its roots back to the 1860s when the predecessor Willamette University School of Medicine was started in Salem. Willamette University and the University of Oregon merged their medical programs in 1913, creating the University of Oregon schools of Medicine and Nursing. In 1945, the North Pacific College of Dentistry was merged into the school, becoming the University of Oregon School of Dentistry.
This lasted until 1974 when the state mandated the combination of those three schools into one freestanding University, independent of the University of Oregon. Its primary campus was established in 1917 by the donation of 20 acres (8.1 ha) from the Oregon-Washington Railroad and Navigation Company and 88 acres (36 ha) from C.S. "Sam" Jackson, publisher of the now-defunct Oregon Journal. The land had originally been bought sight-unseen for the purpose of building a railroad yard. The area being on a hill, however, made this impossible.
In 2006, the animal rights group PETA incited some controversy over OHSU research involving sheep. The research, which is being conducted in conjunction with Oregon State University is designed to understand the biological mechanisms involved in sexual partner preference. These experiments are being funded through public grants through the year 2008.
On October 29, 2008, OHSU announced its largest philanthropic gift to date: a $100 million gift from Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife Penny Knight. The gift went to the OHSU Cancer Institute, renaming it the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute.
Read more about this topic: Oregon Health & Science University
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“I cannot be much pleased without an appearance of truth; at least of possibility—I wish the history to be natural though the sentiments are refined; and the characters to be probable, though their behaviour is excelling.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)