HISTORY

The Department of Physiology and Biophysics has a strong tradition in research and teaching spanning more than a century. The Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, which was founded in 1843, offered the first required laboratory course in physiology in the United States in 1888. Early in its history the Department had two faculty members who were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their research discoveries. John MacLeod, Physiology Professor from 1903 to 1918, shared the 1923 Nobel Prize for the discovery of insulin. Dr. MacLeod completed a considerable amount of the groundwork that furthered his understanding of diabetes in Cleveland. Corneille Heymans, who was a visiting scientist in the Department in 1927 and 1928, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1938 for work on carotid sinus reflexes. Under the direction of Dr. Carl Wiggers, Chair of Physiology from 1918 to 1953, the Department became a leading center for cardiovascular research attracting students and investigators from across the country. The Department was extensively restructured in 1986 to encompass Biophysics, and underwent a second phase of expansion in 1993, under the leadership of Dr. Antonio Scarpa, Chair from 1986 to 2005. The Department's extramural research support is now in excess of ten million dollars a year, making this one of the largest and most active programs in Physiology and Biophysics in the U.S. and abroad. The Department is currently ranked #9 nationally among the 123 departments of physiology based on funding received from the National Institutes of Health, the nation's largest funding agency of biomedical research.

Click here for a nice and more detailed summary of the Department's background (in PDF format) which was compiled by two students, Corttrell Kinney (Ph.D. candidate) and Lech Czerski (Ph.D., 2000) on the occasion of the Department's centennial in 2003.