Rockefeller University - History

History

The Rockefeller University was founded in June 1901 as The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research—often called simply The Rockefeller Institute—by John D. Rockefeller, who had founded the University of Chicago in 1889, upon advice by his adviser Frederick T. Gates and action taken in March 1901 by his son, John D. Rockefeller Jr. Greatly elevating the prestige of American science and medicine, it was America's first biomedical institute, like France's Pasteur Institute (1888) and Germany's Robert Koch Institute (1891).

(The Rockefeller Foundation, a philanthropic organization, founded in 1913, is a separate entity, but had close connections mediated by prominent figures holding dual positions.)

The first director of laboratories was Simon Flexner, former Johns Hopkins University student of the Institute's first scientific director, William H. Welch, first dean of Hopkins' medical school and known as the dean of American medicine. Flexner retired in 1935 and was succeeded by Herbert Gasser, succeeded in 1953 by Detlev Bronk who broadened The Rockefeller Institute into a university that began awarding the PhD degree in 1954. In 1965 The Rockefeller Institute's name was changed to The Rockefeller University.

For its first six decades the Institute focused on basic research to develop basic science, on applied research as biomedical engineering, and, since 1910—when The Rockefeller Hospital opened on its campus as America's first facility for clinical research—on clinical science. The Rockefeller Hospital's first director, Rufus Cole, retired in 1937 and was succeeded by Thomas Milton Rivers, who as director of The Rockefeller Institute's virology laboratory established virology as an independent field apart from bacteriology.