Nathan Smith Davis

Born in 1817 in a log house in central New York, Nathan Smith Davis, MD, began his medical education at the age of 17 as an apprentice with a local physician. He worked for his board, including, by some accounts, attending to his teacher’s horse and cow. He later entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Western New York and graduated in 1837.

Subsequent years were spent in private practice and further academic study. His resolution presented to the New York State Medical Society to “elevate the standard of medical education in the United States” led to the establishment of the American Medical Association (AMA) in 1847. Since that time, he has forever been known as the “father” of the AMA.

In 1849 Dr. Davis and his wife and two children moved to Chicago where he became a department chair at the newly opened Rush Medical College. One year later, he became chair of medicine and was instrumental in founding Mercy Hospital, Chicago’s first hospital to augment the classroom instruction of medical students. In 1859 he and others founded the Medical Department of Lind University, which later became the Chicago Medical College. Dr. Davis played a pivotal role in its later affiliation with Northwestern University and he served as a University trustee until his death in 1904. He was 87.

Dr. Davis was a leader in Chicago’s history, having founded the Chicago Medical Society, the Chicago Historical Society, the Chicago Academy of Sciences, and Union College of Law (which later became the Northwestern University School of Law), where he served as a professor of medical jurisprudence.

Mary Harris Thompson

Mary Harris Thompson, MD 1870, was Northwestern University Medical School’s first female graduate and was the first female surgeon in the United States. She attended Chicago Medical College, (the predecessor of Northwestern University Medical School) in 1869, the first and only year the college accepted women until becoming co-educational in 1926.

As was customary at the time, this New York native needed to attend only one session to receive her medical degree from Northwestern since she already held an MD degree from the New England Female Medical College of Boston. The other two female students in her class were not so fortunate. The school asked them to leave at the end of the session because male students and faculty complained that women in the classroom inhibited discussion of “indelicate” subjects. Although agreeing to be observed in teaching situations, some patients also felt uncomfortable in the presence of female students.

Despite the controversy surrounding the medical school admittance of women, Dr. Thompson became a leader in her chosen profession. In 1870 she founded the Hospital for Women and Children, the first hospital staffed by female physicians. When Dr. Thompson started the hospital, there were only two others in the Windy City—neither allowed female physicians on staff. In fact, one of them, Marine Hospital, did not even accept female patients!

Dr. Thompson established the Woman’s Hospital Medical College of Chicago in 1870 and helped found Chicago’s first nursing school in 1874. She also developed a number of surgical instruments and procedures.

Dedicated to her patients, she cared for them to the very end of her life until she suddenly suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. Dr. Thompson died on May 21, 1895, at age 66.

Daniel Hale Williams

Daniel Hale Williams, MD 1883, gained the distinction of becoming Northwestern’s first African American medical graduate and medical school faculty member. A strong advocate for the education of African Americans in medicine and nursing and health care for the underserved, he founded Chicago’s Provident Hospital, the country’s first black-owned and –operated interracial medical institution, in 1891. He would later help found other such hospitals across the country.

In July 1893 he performed one of the first successful open-heart surgeries in the country, suturing the pericardium on a victim of a stab wound to the heart. President Grover Cleveland appointed Dr. Williams surgeon-in-chief at Freedman’s Hospital in Washington from 1894–98. During his career he was instrumental in the founding of the National Medical Association, the only professional organization of its day open to black physicians, and the American College of Surgeons.

Born in 1856 in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, to free parents of European, Native American, and black heritage, he was apprenticed to a Baltimore shoemaker when he was 11 years old, after his father died of tuberculosis. A few months later, he ran away to Rockford, Illinois, where his mother and sisters had moved to be with family. By age 17 he was running his own barbershop in southern Wisconsin. At age 22 he began an apprenticeship with noted Civil Warsurgeon Henry Palmer, MD, followed by medical training at Chicago Medical College, later to become Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Dr. Williams died on August 4, 1931, at age 75. On September 9, 2004, the medical school celebrated the dedication of its 182-seat Daniel Hale Williams Auditorium in the McGaw Pavilion—named in honor of the school’s first African American graduate.

Carlos Montezuma

The medical school’s first Native American graduate, Carlos Montezuma, MD 1889, was born in 1865 in central Arizona as a Yavapai Indian named Wassaja. Captured by a raiding Indian tribe when he was five years old, he was sold for $30. Carlo Gentile, an Italian-born photographer, bought the boy’s freedom, gave him a new name, taught him English, and enrolled him in school.

Dr. Montezuma graduated in 1884 from what would become the University of Illinois; he was that institution’s first Native American graduate. He went on to medical school at Northwestern and then worked as a physician in the West for the Bureau of Indian Affairs for a time. He eventually returned to Chicago where he developed a successful private practice.

An ardent supporter of Native American rights, he believed that the future of his people depended on their assimilation into the white man’s culture. He fought for the elimination of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian reservations. Instrumental in starting the Society of American Indians, he delivered his famous “Let My People Go” speech at its 1916 conference, again calling for the end of the bureau. In his later years he authored a newsletter called Wassaja, named after his originally given boyhood name meaning “signaling or beckoning” and dedicated to furthering the same cause.

In later years, Dr. Montezuma reconnected with his Native American roots. In 1922, terminally ill with tuberculosis, he traveled to the Yavapai’s Fort McDonald Reservation in Arizona where he died one year later.

John A.D. Cooper

In 1969 John A.D. Cooper, MD ’51, PhD ’51, became the first full-time president of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), which until that time had been run by an executive director. Moving with the organization from Evanston, Illinois, to Washington, he was instrumental in forming national policy on medical education during his 17-year tenure with the AAMC.

Named one of the five most influential people in medical and health education by U.S. News & World Report in 1981, Dr. Cooper published more than 300 articles on biomedical research, medical education, health policy, and medical care.

After receiving a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from New Mexico State University in 1939, he served in World War II and rose to the rank of first lieutenant in the Sanitary Corps of the Army. Following his military service, he attended Northwestern University where he received both his MD and PhD degrees. After his graduation, Dr. Cooper joined the faculty and was associate dean of the medical school from 1959–63, then associate dean of faculties and dean of sciences from 1963–69. He died on January 27, 2002, at the age of 83.

Thomas E. Starzl

Transplant surgeon Dr. Thomas E. Starzl earned his MD and PhD degrees at Northwestern in 1952. Known as the “father of transplantation,” he performed the first successful liver transplant in 1967 at the University of Colorado, where he would eventually be named chair of surgery. Joining the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine in 1981, he led the team of surgeons who performed the city’s first liver transplant. Twenty-nine more liver transplants followed that year, launching the university’s renowned liver transplant program. Dr. Starzl followed that feat with the first multiple organ transplant in 1983, the first heart and liver transplant in 1984, and the first liver and intestine transplant in 1990.

In 1980 he introduced the anti-rejection medications anti-lymphocyte globulin and cyclosporine and in 1989 was instrumental in developing tacrolimus, a drug that significantly increased survival rates in transplantation patients.

Dr. Starzl grew up in Le Mars, Iowa. He earned a bachelor’s degree in biology at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, before arriving at Northwestern. He later went on to residency training at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Miami, and the Veterans Administration Research Hospital in Chicago.

In 1996 the University of Pittsburgh’s transplant center was renamed the Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute, where he is director emeritus. Author or coauthor of more than 2,000 scientific articles, his autobiography, The Puzzle People: Memoirs of a Transplant Surgeon, has been translated into several languages. Dr. Starzl received the 2004 National Medal of Science for “his unique contributions to basic and applied science that resulted in the emergence of organ transplantation as a widely available treatment.”

Joseph P. Kerwin

As the first physician in space, Joseph P. Kerwin, MD ’57, marked his place in the history of space travel and medicine. He served as a science pilot aboard Skylab 2, the first manned mission to the Skylab 1 space station, where he studied the adaptation of the crew to zero gravity. His mission along with other Skylab operations proved that humans could live and work in space for extended periods. It also proved to be “one great leap” for Northwestern as this proud alumnus carried a University pennant on board.

Besides his role as an aerospace physician, Dr. Kerwin was called on to be a space repairman, too! Launched on May 25, 1973, the crew’s first order of business was to fix damages to the Skylab station. Attached to 60-foot life lines, he and Commander Charles Conrad Jr. moved outside the spacecraft. They used a cutting tool and their own muscle to free a stuck solar panel. The crew returned home after a record four weeks in orbit.

Following the flight, this native of Oak Park, Illinois, became director of Space and Life Sciences at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. He resigned from NASA and the U.S. Navy in 1987. From then until present he has held management positions in private industry. He was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1997.

He is one of several coauthors of the book Homesteading Space: The Skylab Story (University of Nebraska Press, 2008).

Charles H. Mayo

Charles H. Mayo, MD 1888, once said, “My one great ambition is to relieve all the physical suffering possible during my life.” Indeed, he and his brother, William J. Mayo, MD, dedicated their lives to achieving this goal by founding the famed Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The Mayo brothers celebrated the opening of the clinic’s first building in 1914; today the Mayo Clinic is one of the largest integrated group practices in the world. Attracting patients from all walks of life, the clinic began as a family practice started by “Dr. Charlie’s” father, a country doctor. In 1888 Dr. Mayo joined the family business after earning his MD degree from the Chicago Medical College (later Northwestern’s medical school) and completing postgraduate training in New York to further his expertise in surgery. A renowned surgeon, Dr. Mayo pioneered modern goiter surgery and surgical techniques for the nervous system. He performed numerous other procedures including operations for cataracts; the brain, ear, nose, and throat; and the abdomen.

Not only skilled clinicians, Dr. Mayo and his brother were passionate about advancing the field of medicine. In 1915 they established the Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research—the country’s first graduate education program in clinical medicine. Now known as the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine, the independent institution offers residency and fellowships programs in a wide variety of medical and surgical specialties.

Dr. Mayo held several leadership positions in his field, including serving as president of the American Medical Association in 1916. He also was a trustee of Northwestern University. During a visit to Chicago, Dr. Mayo succumbed to lobar pneumonia. He died at Mercy Hospital on May 26, 1939, at age 73.

Howard T. Ricketts

Shortly after completing his internship at Cook County Hospital, the allure of laboratory research prompted Howard T. Ricketts, MD 1897, to pursue a fellowship at Rush in pathology and cutaneous diseases. A natural born scientist, he studied blastomycosis—the first disease known to be produced by a yeast. Dr. Ricketts first major publication of his findings filled the entire 1901 issue of the Journal of Medical Research.

After he completed his fellowship the following year, he joined the faculty at the University of Chicago and continued to pursue his research interests in disease processes. In 1906 Dr. Ricketts—an avid outdoorsman who enjoyed hunting and fishing—jumped at the chance to spend his summers in the Bitterroot Valley in Montana where he investigated the cause of Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Local Native Americans believed that evil spirits visited the valley, causing outbreaks of the potentially fatal disease most often in the springtime. Using an animal model, Dr. Ricketts discovered that ticks—and not evil spirits—carried the causative microbe. Like humans, ticks become more active with the warmer spring temperatures. In honor of the man who discovered it, the bacterial organism was named Rickettsia rickettsii.

The similarity between Rocky Mountain spotted fever and typhus led Dr. Ricketts to then pursue studies in the latter. Tragically while transferring lice in the laboratory, he was bitten by a louse and contracted the very disease that he was studying. Only 39 at the time, Dr. Ricketts died on May 3, 1910, and became known to some as a “medical martyr” who sacrificed his life for the advancement of science and medicine.

T.K. Lawless

Even as a medical student at Northwestern, Theodore K. Lawless, MD ’19, had a keen eye for business. Later to become a noted African American dermatologist, philanthropist, and medical pioneer, he began amassing his fortune while in medical school. He took patient referrals from the two major physicians giving costly injections for syphilis at that time; patients who couldn’t afford the injections would be directed to Lawless for care. Fittingly, after medical school, Dr. Lawless subspecialized in syphilology as well as dermatology. Known as a top authority “on the skin,” he spent part of his career working to find a cure for leprosy as well as advancing the treatment of both leprosy and syphilis.

A native of Louisiana, Dr. Lawless grew up in New Orleans and attended a school built by his grandfather—a former slave—for black children. Although he started medical school at the University of Kansas, he came to Northwestern where he graduated with an MD degree in 1919 and an MS degree in 1920. After postgraduate training at Columbia and Harvard as well as the University of Paris, Dr. Lawless returned to Chicago in 1924 where he set up a successful practice on the South Side. That year he also returned to his alma mater as a faculty member and renowned dermatology investigator, teaching and conducting research until 1941.

In addition to running his clinical practice, he was president of the Service Federal Savings and Loan Association—opened in 1951 to primarily serve Chicago’s black community. Giving back to the community and city of Chicago through philanthropy, he donated funds for a research laboratory at Provident Hospital. In 1954 Dr. Lawless received the prestigious Spingarn Medal, awarded by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, for his “notable contributions to the health, enlightenment, and welfare of his fellow citizens of all races, faiths, and classes.”

At the age of 78, Dr. Lawless died in Chicago on May 1, 1971, after a long illness.

Augusta Webster

Augusta Webster, MD, graduated from Northwestern in 1932 as one of only four women in her medical school class of 120 students. The first woman to be named a full professor at her alma mater, in 1960 she became the first woman in the country to head a department at a major teaching hospital—the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Cook County Hospital (now John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County). At Cook County she was a celebrated teacher, dedicated physician, and friend to the medically underserved people of Chicago. In 1970 Dr. Webster introduced at County Cook the first nurse midwife program in Illinois.

She was also one of two women appointed to the American College of Surgeons’ Committee on Arrangement and she founded the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the Portes Cancer Prevention Center, originally established for early detection of cervical and breast cancer in young women.

In 1954 Dr. Webster was named “Woman of the Year” by the American Medical Women’s Association. In 1991 an anonymous donor created the Augusta Webster Faculty Fellowships in Medical Education in her honor. Professor emeritus of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern, Dr. Webster died in her Lincoln Park home on March 20, 1993. She was 89.

In 2007 a gift from the Excelsior Foundation endowed the Augusta Webster, MD, Office of Medical Education at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Ralph S. Paffenbarger Jr.

While regular exercise had from the time of Hippocrates generally seemed like a good idea, the medical and scientific community didn’t consider it a factor in the endpoints of disease until as recently as the mid-1990s. Thanks to the pioneering work of renowned epidemiologist Ralph S. Paffenbarger Jr., MD ’47, DrPH, physical exercise gained credibility as a method for reducing the risk of coronary heart disease and improving general well-being and longevity.

In 1960 Dr. Paffenbarger launched the long-running College Alumni Health Study. He and his associates tracked the health, exercise habits and lifestyle patterns of 71,044 alumni from Harvard College and the University of Pennsylvania. They discovered that burning at least 2,000 calories a week through regular and vigorous exercise could make a difference in cardiovascular disease prevention. Dr. Paffenbarger then followed up his landmark study by documenting the influence of physical activity on longshoremen who worked the docks in California. This research yielded the same results: exercise does a body good.

An ultra-marathoner who started running at age 45, Dr. Paffenbarger received the first International Olympic Committee Prize in 1996 for showing the value of physical activity in fighting heart disease. He and a colleague received their medals at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.

This emeritus professor of epidemiology at Stanford University, adjunct professor of epidemiology at Harvard University, and research epidemiologist at the University of California at Berkeley lived to the age of 84 before passing away on July 14, 2007, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Ora Hirsch Pescovitz

Ora Hirsch Pescovitz, MD ’79, GME ’85, a nationally recognized pediatric endocrinologist and researcher and top-level academic medical center leader continues to blaze trails for women in medicine and health care. Serving as executive associate dean for research affairs at Indiana University (IU) School of Medicine and president and chief executive officer of Riley Hospital for Children—the sixth largest children’s hospital in the country—she became in 2007 interim vice president for research administration at IU. On May 11, 2009, she expanded upon her accomplishments as a researcher, clinician, and administrator by becoming executive vice president for medical affairs at the University of Michigan and chief executive officer of the University of Michigan Health System.

Always appreciative of the foundation Northwestern gave her to “run the spectrum” in her career, Dr. Pescovitz has published 180 manuscripts and books. Most of her research has focused on better understanding the physiologic and molecular mechanisms responsible for disorders of growth and puberty to develop novel therapies for these conditions.

She has served as president of the Society for Pediatric Research, the nation's largest pediatric research organization; president of the Lawson Wilkins (North American) Pediatric Endocrine Society; chair of the March of Dimes Grants Review Committee; and a member of the Ad-Hoc Group for Medical Research Funding, the Board of the Hormone Foundation, the Board of the National Association of Children’s Hospitals and Related Institutions, and the Board of the Children’s Miracle Network. She also has served as a sub-editor or as a member of the editorial board of six scientific journals.

Dr. Pescovitz and her husband, Mark D. Pescovitz, MD ’79, professor of surgery and of microbiology and immunology, and vice chair for research in the Department of Surgery at Indiana University have three children: Aliza, Ari, and Naomi.