Facts & History

1890s
Botanist Henry Chandler Cowles’s study of changes to the Indiana Dunes along the southern shore of Lake Michigan opens a new field of inquiry in the natural sciences: ecology. 

1910 
Pathologist Howard Ricketts discovers the organism that causes Rocky Mountain spotted fever before his death in 1910, providing the basis for treating the disease. Today the Howard T. Ricketts Laboratory at Argonne National Laboratory is a regional biocontainment laboratory that supports research for the detection, prevention, and elimination of anthrax, hemorrhagic fever, influenza, plague, and emerging infectious diseases.

1916
During research for his PhD dissertation in zoology, Ernest Everett Just, PhD’16, makes an important discovery about cell cleavage, showing that the sperm entry point determines the first cleavage plane in the egg of the marine annelid Nereis limbata.

1917  
Medical scientist Oswald Robertson pioneers the idea of blood banks in the “blood depots” he established during service in France with the US Army Medical Corps. Robertson later becomes chair of the University of Chicago Department of Medicine.

1925
The world’s first sleep laboratory opens under the direction of Nathaniel Kleitman, PhD. Kleitman wrote the first textbook in the emerging field, Sleep and Wakefulness (1939). In 1953, Kleitman collaborated with graduate student Eugene Aserinsky to report the discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) and its links to dreaming.

1927
Walter Palmer, MD, PhD, establishes the nation’s first full-time academic gastroenterology section.

1940s
Medical researcher Leon O. Jacobson, MD’39, performs the first bone marrow transplant. He discovered he could save a mouse whose bone marrow and spleen had been destroyed by transplanting donated spleen tissue into the mouse. The procedure now helps thousands of patients with cancer and other diseases each year.

1941
Cancer researcher Charles B. Huggins treats patients suffering from advanced prostate cancer by removing the hormone the cancers needed to grow. Hormonal treatment has since become a mainstay of care for several types of cancer, including breast and gynecological cancers.

1946–61  
Research at the University of Chicago leads to fluoridation of water nationwide.

1958 
Building on the work of cancer researcher Charles B. Huggins, Elwood Jensen and fellow medical researcher Eugene Desombre identify the precise mechanism through which hormones drive cancer—by binding to a receptor protein in cells. The finding opens a new therapeutic front in breast cancer, leading to targeted treatments credited with saving many lives each year.

1963
Alan Rechtschaffen, PhD, and Gerry Vogel, PhD, publish a paper on narcolepsy, the first true sleep disorder to be clinically defined.

1965
Biochemist Donald F. Steiner, SM’56, MD’56, discovers proinsulin, the first “pro-hormone” and precursor to insulin. The finding leads to the synthetic production of human insulin, markedly improving therapy for diabetes sufferers, and lays the groundwork for improved understanding of how other proteins in the body are made.

1972
Janet Rowley, MD, finds that a particular type of leukemia results when two chromosomes abnormally exchange genetic material. Her findings help establish the genetic causes of cancer.

1977
Biochemist Eugene Goldwasser isolates erythropoietin (EPO), the hormone behind red blood cell formation. The discovery allows then start-up Amgen to identify and clone the gene behind EPO and then employ “recombinant” engineering to develop the first blockbuster drug of the biotech age, which has since treated millions with anemia.

1984 
The University unveils the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, the first academic institute dedicated to clinical medical ethics. Its work aims to improve physicians’ skills and performance in decision-making and caring for patients.

1989
University of Chicago Medicine physicians perform the first successful living-donor liver transplant in the United States.

1990s 
Paleontologist Paul Sereno’s discoveries of previously unknown dinosaur species on several continents contribute to our understanding of the dinosaur family tree and to the larger question of how evolution works over millions of years.

1998
Robert Daum, MD, describes the first cases of community acquired methicillin- resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

1999
Eve Van Cauter, MD, discovers the links between chronic partial sleep deprivation and hormonal and metabolic abnormalities that mimic aging and metabolic syndrome.

2000s
In the early 2000s, cancer researcher Wei-Jen Tang discovers the structure of edema factor, one of the three toxins that make the anthrax bacterium deadly, an essential step in finding treatment for the infection.

2004
Vertebrate paleontologist Neil Shubin discovers the 375-million-year-old Tiktaalik roseae, better known as the "fishapod," the first fish that ventured out of water onto land.