entrance
Founding Dating back to its affiliation with the
University of California in 1873, the
UCSF School of Medicine was the only public medical school in
California. This made sense in the late 19th century when most of California's population lived in
Northern California and
Southern California was a lightly populated desert. It no longer made sense by the 1940s, after
Los Angeles had overtaken
San Francisco to become the leading metropolis on the
West Coast of the United States. Dr.
Elmer Belt was instrumental in lobbying for the establishment of the School. The movement to start a medical school at UCLA began with Provost
Clarence Addison Dykstra, who persuaded UC President
Robert Gordon Sproul to appoint a committee headed by
Vern Oliver Knudsen to study the issue. On October 18, 1945, the committee presented its findings to the
Regents of the University of California. In July 1955, the
UCLA Medical Center was opened.
Mellinkoff administration Sherman Mellinkoff succeeded Stafford Warren as dean in 1962 and served for the next 24 years. Under Mellinkoff, the
UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, the UCLA Brain Research Institute, and the
Marion Davies Children's Center were founded. The
Jules Stein Eye Institute and the Reed Neurological Research Center were established. By decade's end, UCLA had doubled the size of the medical school and the hospital. The
UCLA School of Dentistry,
School of Public Health, and
School of Nursing were formed as well. The medical school grew to nearly 400 medical students, more than 700 interns and residents, and almost 200 master's and doctorate candidates. A partnership was formed with the
Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in 1966 to train medical students with the goal of meeting the needs of the underserved in
South Los Angeles. The school continued its growth in the 1970s, becoming affiliated with
VA facilities as well as
Olive View–UCLA Medical Center. In 1974, the school co-founded the Biomedical Sciences Program with
UC Riverside, which offers 24 students each year the opportunity to earn both the B.S. and M.D. degrees in seven years instead of the traditional eight. 1981 saw the dedication of the Doris and Louis Factor Health Sciences Building which houses the School of Nursing and Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. In 1987, construction began on UCLA Medical Plaza, an outpatient facility located across the street from the main hospital.
Post-Mellinkoff era Kenneth I. Shine succeeded Sherman Mellinkoff as dean in 1986. In 1992 Shine left UCLA to become President of the
Institute of Medicine in
Washington, D.C. Gerald S. Levey was then appointed provost of medical sciences and dean of the medical school in 1994. Levey oversaw expansion of interdisciplinary research and the establishment of a Department of Human Genetics. The Gonda (Goldschmied) Neuroscience and Genetics Research Center, as well as the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, were constructed. In October 2008, Levey announced that he would be stepping down from the position of Dean in 2009. The UCLA School of Medicine was renamed "David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA" in 2002 in honor of
media mogul David Geffen, who donated $200 million in unrestricted funds. Effective February 2010, A. Eugene Washington was appointed Dean of the UCLA School of Medicine and Vice-Chancellor of Health Sciences at UCLA. Washington, a clinician, academician, researcher, and university administrator, was recruited from
UCSF, where he served as Vice-Chancellor and Provost, as well as Professor of gynecology, epidemiology, and health policy. Washington is the first African-American to hold these leadership posts at UCLA. UCLA constructed the
Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center across the street from the original facility to comply with the California
earthquake law. The hospital is named after the late
President of the United States and
Governor of California,
Ronald Reagan. It was designed by architect
I.M. Pei. Patients were transferred there from the existing hospital in June 2008. In the rankings released for 2024,
U.S. News & World Report ranked David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA as Tier 1 in the U.S. in research and ranked UCLA Medical Center at No. 5. ==Affiliated hospitals==