Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

History

Before his death in 1873, Baltimore financier and philanthropist Johns Hopkins appointed a 12-member board of trustees to carry out his vision for a university and hospital that would be linked to each other by a medical school, which was at the time a radical idea.

Construction of the Johns Hopkins Hospital began in 1877 with the razing of the site formerly occupied by the city's mental asylum, and took twelve years to complete. By the time the hospital opened in 1889, only six of the original twelve trustees appointed by Hopkins were still alive. Despite having already recruited the necessary faculty, the board no longer had enough funds to establish the medical school.

Four of the original trustee's daughters, led by Mary Elizabeth Garrett, started a nationwide fundraising campaign to secure funding for the medical school. The campaign was stipulated on the condition that the remaining trustees agree to open the medical school to both men and women, as women were generally excluded from medical education in the 1890s. When the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine officially opened its doors in 1893, there were three women in its first class.

The founding physicians of the JHUSOM were pathologist William Henry Welch (1850–1934), the first dean of the school, Canadian internist William Osler (1849–1919), author of The Principles and Practice of Medicine (1892), surgeon William Stewart Halsted (1852–1922), who revolutionized surgery by insisting on subtle skill and technique and strict adherence to aseptic technique, and gynecological surgeon Howard Atwood Kelly (1858–1943), credited with establishing gynecology as a specialty and among the first to use radium in the treatment of cancer.

Research and innovation

The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine has a long history of groundbreaking medical research and breakthroughs.

Many aspects of modern medical education in the United States were introduced by Johns Hopkins. The first formal medical residency programs were created by founding faculty William Osler and William Stewart Halsted at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

A Johns Hopkins surgical team including Alfred Blalock, Helen Taussig, and Vivien Thomas pioneered a surgical procedure used to correct common congenital heart defects such as Tetralogy of Fallot that cause blue baby syndrome.

After a series of case studies at the Harriet Lane Home (now Johns Hopkins Children's Center), the first of whom was Donald Triplett, Hopkins psychiatrist Leo Kanner published the first clinical description of autism in 1943.

Hopkins researchers made critical contributions to the development of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Surgeon James Jude along with engineers William Kouwenhoeven and Guy Knickerbocker discovered the effectiveness of external chest compressions following cardiac arrest, which were combined with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to create the modern technique. Kouwenhoeven was also part of a Hopkins team that conducted the earliest research on electric cardiac defibrillation and later successfully developed a closed-chest defibrillation device.

The oldest cultured human cell line, known as HeLa, was first isolated from the cervical cancer cells of Johns Hopkins patient Henrietta Lacks in 1951. The cell line has immortalized and is still widely used in medical research.

Johns Hopkins neuroscientist Sol Snyder led a team that discovered opioid receptors, leading into further research uncovering the role of neurotransmitters in the brain as well as drug development for disorders such as schizophrenia.

The implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) was invented by a team of Hopkins researchers at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore.

Facilities

The School of Medicine, along with the Johns Hopkins Hospital (the School of Medicine's primary teaching hospital), Johns Hopkins Children's Center, Bloomberg School of Public Health, and School of Nursing, are located on the Johns Hopkins Medical Campus in East Baltimore.

The wider Johns Hopkins Medicine system includes several other regional medical centers, including Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center on Eastern Avenue in East Baltimore, Howard County General Hospital in Columbia, Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C., and Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida. Together, they form an academic health science center.

Rankings and reputation

According to the Flexner Report, Hopkins has served as the model for American medical education.

Its major teaching hospital, the Johns Hopkins Hospital, was ranked one of the top hospitals in the United States by U.S. News & World Report. Was ranked #2 among research-oriented medical schools before formally withdrawing from participating in the U.S. News ranking system in 2023.

Academics

Colleges Advisory Program

Upon matriculation, medical students at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine are divided into four colleges named after Hopkins faculty members who have had an impact in the history of medicine, Florence Sabin, Vivien Thomas, Daniel Nathans, and Helen Taussig. The colleges were established in 2005.

In each incoming class, 30 students are assigned to each college, and each college is further subdivided into six molecules of five students each. Each molecule is advised and taught by a faculty advisor, who instructs them in Clinical Foundations of Medicine, a core first-year course, and continues advising them throughout their four years of medical school. The family within each college of each molecule across the four years who belong to a given advisor is referred to as a macromolecule. Every year, the colleges compete in the "College Olympics" in late October, a competition that includes athletic events and sports, as well as art battles and dance-offs.

Governance

The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is led by Ronald J. Daniels, president of Johns Hopkins University, and Theodore DeWeese, dean of the medical faculty and chief executive officer of Johns Hopkins Medicine. Kevin Sowers serves as president of Johns Hopkins Health System and executive vice president of Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Notable people

Nobel laureates

As of 2026, the 17 out of the total 29 Nobel laureates associated with Johns Hopkins have come from the School of Medicine, including 15 out of the university's 18 laureates in Physiology or Medicine and 2 out of the 6 laureates for Chemistry. Two laureates, Peter Agre and Gregg Semenza, are current faculty at the School of Medicine.

The 1985 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). Two of the six founding members of the organization, Bernard Lown (M.D. 1945) and James E. Muller (M.D. 1969) were graduates of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Gregg L. Semenza – Professor of Genetic Medicine (1990–present), Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2019

William Kaelin Jr. – Resident, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2019

Carol Greider – Bloomberg Distinguished Professor (2014–2020), Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2009

Richard Axel – M.D. 1971, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2004

Peter Agre – Bloomberg Distinguished Professor (2014–present), M.D. 1974, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2003

David H. Hubel – Neuroscience Fellow (1958–59), former resident, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1981

Torsten Wiesel – Assistant Professor (1958–59), Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1981

Hamilton O. Smith – Professor of Microbiology (1973–1998), M.D. 1956, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1978

Daniel Nathans – Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics (1967–1999), Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1978

Notable faculty

John Jacob Abel, pharmacologist, founder and chair of the first department of pharmacology in the U.S.

Alfred Blalock, developed field of cardiac surgery, including the Blalock–Taussig shunt

William R. Brody, former radiologist-in-chief, former president of Johns Hopkins University (1996–2009), former president of the Salk Institute (2009–2015)

Ben Carson, pediatric neurosurgeon, presidential candidate, former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development

George Otto Gey, researcher who first isolated HeLa cells from the tumor tissue of Henrietta Lacks, a cancer patient at Johns Hopkins

William Halsted, considered the "father of modern surgery" and one of four founders of Johns Hopkins Medicine

Leo Kanner, "father of child psychiatry" who first described autism in Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact, published in 1943

Howard Kelly, physician credited with establishing gynecology as a specialty

Marty Makary, Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Victor A. McKusick, developed the field of medical genetics and founded OMIM, received Albert Lasker Special Achievement Award

John Money, psychologist and sexologist who pioneered gender identity research, coining the terms gender role and sexual orientation

William Osler, considered the "father of modern medicine", discovered Osler–Weber–Rendu syndrome, a hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia

Notable alumni

Dorothy Hansine Andersen, identified cystic fibrosis and Andersen's disease

Hugh Grosvenor Calkins, Catherine Ellen Poindexter Professor of Cardiology

George G. Glenner, research pathologist who identified beta-amyloid, a protein associated with Alzheimer's disease

Andy Harris, U.S. Representative for Maryland's 1st Congressional District since 2011

Harry Klinefelter, rheumatologist, endocrinologist, and namesake of Klinefelter syndrome

Leroy Hood, invented automated DNA and protein sequencing, Lasker Award winner

Maclyn McCarty, his 1944 experiment helped demonstrate that genes were made of DNA, rather than protein, first recipient of the Albert Lasker Special Achievement Award

Wilder Penfield, pioneer of epilepsy neurosurgery who developed the cortical homunculus

Peter Pronovost, former anesthesiology faculty, Time 100 in 2008, authored over 800 articles and book chapters on patient safety, advisor to the World Health Organization's World Alliance for Patient Safety

Dorothy Reed Mendenhall, pathologist and namesake of Reed–Sternberg cell in Hodgkin's lymphoma

Florence Sabin, first woman to hold a full professorship at a medical school, Albert Lasker Public Service Award for public health activism in her home state Colorado

Gertrude Stein, novelist, poet, and playwright

Philanthropy

In July 2024, businessman and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a $1 billion gift to his alma mater Johns Hopkins University to make tuition free for all medical school students whose families make under $300,000 a year, beginning in the fall of 2024.

In popular culture

The ABC documentary series Hopkins takes a look at the life of the medical staff and students of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System. This 2008 series is a sequel to the 2000 ABC special Hopkins 24/7. Both Hopkins and Hopkins 24/7 were awarded the Peabody Award.

The movie Something the Lord Made is the story of two men – an ambitious white surgeon, head of surgery at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and a gifted black carpenter turned lab technician – who defied the racial strictures of the Jim Crow South and together pioneered the field of heart surgery.