Weill Cornell Medicine (; officially Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University), originally Cornell University Medical College, is the medical school of

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

, located on the

Upper East Side The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the boroughs of New York City, borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded approximately by 96th Street (Manhattan), 96th Street to the north, the East River to the e ...

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. The school and its associated research organization is affiliated with several hospitals and medical centers, including NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell Medical Center, Hospital for Special Surgery, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and

Rockefeller University The Rockefeller University is a Private university, private Medical research, biomedical Research university, research and graduate-only university in New York City, New York. It focuses primarily on the biological and medical sciences and pro ...

, all of which are located on or near

York Avenue and Sutton Place York Avenue, Sutton Place, and Sutton Place South are the names of segments of a north–south thoroughfare in the Yorkville, Lenox Hill, and Sutton Place neighborhoods of the East Side of Manhattan, in New York City. York Avenue runs from ...

. Since 2004, Weill Cornell has also been affiliated with Houston Methodist Hospital. In 1991, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Rockefeller University joined Weill Cornell to establish the

Tri-Institutional MD–PhD Program The Tri-Institutional MD–PhD Program is a MD–PhD degree program based in Upper East Side, New York City. Introduced in 1991, the current program is operated by Weill Cornell Medicine, Rockefeller University, and Memorial Sloan Kettering C ...

. In 2001, the school opened the Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, a medical school in

Qatar Qatar, officially the State of Qatar, is a country in West Asia. It occupies the Geography of Qatar, Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it shares Qatar–Saudi Arabia border, its sole land b ...

History

19th century

The Cornell Medical College was founded on April 14, 1898, with an endowment by Col. Oliver H. Payne. The college was established in

because Ithaca, where the Cornell main campus is located, was deemed too small to offer adequate clinical training opportunities. James Ewing was the first professor of clinical pathology at the school, and for a while the only full-time professor.James B. Murph
James Ewing Biographical Memoir
National Academy of Sciences Washington D.C., 1951.

20th century

The college founded the medical fraternity

Phi Delta Epsilon Phi Delta Epsilon () (commonly known as PhiDE) is a co-ed international medical fraternity founded at Cornell Medical College and a member of the Professional Fraternity Association. History Phi Delta Epsilon was founded on October 13, 1904, at ...

on October 13, 1904. A branch of the medical school operated in Stimson Hall on the main campus. The two-year Ithaca course paralleled the first two years of the New York school. The Ithaca location closed in 1938 due to declining enrollment. The school became affiliated with New York Hospital, now

NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital The NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital (abbreviated as NYP) is a nonprofit academic medical center in New York City. It is the primary teaching hospital for Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. The hospi ...

, in 1913. The institutions opened a joint hospital-educational campus in Yorkville in 1932. In 1927,

William Payne Whitney William Payne Whitney (March 20, 1876 – May 25, 1927) was an American businessman and member of the influential Whitney family. He inherited a fortune and enlarged it through business dealings, then devoted much of his money and efforts to ...

's $27 million donation led to the building of the

Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic The Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic (PWC) was a hospital on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City, United States. It was founded by an endowment bestowed by Payne Whitney (March 20, 1876 – May 25, 1927) upon his death. Whitney w ...

, which became the name for Cornell's large psychiatric effort. Its Training School for Nurses became affiliated with the university in 1942, operating as the Cornell Nursing School until it closed in 1979. In 1936, the Swiss professor and psychiatrist Oskar Diethelm contributed a collection of more than 10,000 titles related to the history of psychiatry, helping to build up the Oskar Diethelm Historical Library. The Cornell University Medical College was renamed the "Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University" after then-

Citigroup Citigroup Inc. or Citi (Style (visual arts), stylized as citi) is an American multinational investment banking, investment bank and financial services company based in New York City. The company was formed in 1998 by the merger of Citicorp, t ...

chairman Sanford I. Weill pledged a $100 million donation to Cornell University for its biomedical research in 1998.

21st century

In 2015, the school was renamed Weill Cornell Medicine. On September 16, 2019, Augustine M.K. Choi announced Weill Cornell Medicine would make the cost of attendance free for all students who qualify for financial aid, made possible by a $160 million gift from The Starr Foundation, directed by Weill Cornell Medicine overseer Maurice R. Greenberg, in partnership with gifts from Joan and Board of Overseers Chairman Emeritus Sanford I. Weill. In March 2024, Augustine M.K. Choi, professor and former Dean of Weill Cornell Medicine, was accused of altering data for two decades in his research on animals.

Notable alumni

* Iqbal Mahmoud Al Assad, pediatric cardiologist * Robert Atkins, creator of the

Atkins Diet The Atkins diet is a low-carbohydrate fad diet devised by Robert Atkins in the 1970s, marketed with claims that carbohydrate restriction is crucial to weight loss and that the diet offered "a high calorie way to stay thin forever". The diet be ...

* Hilary Blumberg, professor of psychiatric neuroscience * Carlos Cordon-Cardo, physician and scientist * John P. Donohue, physician and testicular cancer researcher * Mario Gaudino, cardiac surgeon and coronary revascularization expert * Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease * John Gartner, psychotherapist; author; former Johns Hopkins University Medical School professor; founder or dutytowarn.org PAC * Wilson Greatbatch, inventor of the cardiac

artificial pacemaker A pacemaker, also known as an artificial cardiac pacemaker, is an Implant (medicine), implanted medical device that generates Pulse (signal processing), electrical pulses delivered by electrodes to one or more of the Heart chamber, chambers of ...

* Iser Ginzburg, physician and journalist * Nan Hayworth, physician and former U.S. Representative * Henry Heimlich, physician and namesake of the Heimlich maneuver * Roy S. Herbst, oncologist, lung cancer researcher, and academic at Yale Cancer Center and

Yale School of Medicine The Yale School of Medicine is the medical school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was founded in 1810 as the Medical Institution of Yale College and formally opened in 1813. It is the sixth-oldest m ...

Richard Hooker Richard Hooker (25 March 1554 – 2 November 1600) was an English priest in the Church of England and an influential theologian.''The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church'' by F. L. Cross (Editor), E. A. Livingstone (Editor) Oxford Univer ...

, surgeon and writer * Peter Hotez, scientist, pediatrician, advocate in the fields of global health and vaccinology * John Howland, pediatrician * Mae C. Jemison, former astronaut * Amy Kelley, geriatrician and palliative care specialist, deputy director of the National Institute on Aging *

C. Everett Koop Charles Everett Koop (October 14, 1916 – February 25, 2013) was an American pediatric surgeon and public health administrator who served as the 13th surgeon general of the United States under President Ronald Reagan from 1982 to 1989. According ...

, former Surgeon General * Bonnie Mathieson, scientist and

HIV/AIDS The HIV, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system. Without treatment, it can lead to a spectrum of conditions including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). It is a Preventive healthcare, pr ...

researcher * Alton Meister, scientist and HIV/AIDS researcher * Elizabeth Nabel, president of

Brigham and Women's Hospital Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH or The Brigham) is a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School and the largest hospital in the Longwood Medical Area in Boston, Massachusetts. Along with Massachusetts General Hospital, it is one of the two ...

* Utthara Nayar, cancer researcher at the Dan-Farber Cancer Institute * James Peake, former

United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs The United States secretary of veterans affairs is the head of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, the department concerned with veterans' benefits, health care, and national veterans' memorials and cemeteries. The secretary is a me ...

* Jacob Robbins, endocrinologist at the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Service ...

* Ida S. Scudder, medical missionary in India *

Ruth Westheimer Karola Ruth Westheimer (née Siegel; June 4, 1928 – July 12, 2024), better known as Dr. Ruth, was a German and American sex therapist and talk show host. Westheimer was born in Germany to a Jewish family. As the Nazis came to power, her paren ...

(see below)

Notable faculty

* David H. Abramson, ophthalmic surgeon * Lewis C. Cantley, Meyer Director and Professor of Cancer Biology at the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine * Mario Gaudino, professor of cardiothoracic surgery, principal investigator of the ROMA trial, a multinational trial of radial artery grafting in CABG * Antonio Gotto, cardiologist and dean emeritus * Amos Grunebaum, obstetrician and gynecologist * David P. Hajjar, dean emeritus, Professor and Professor of Pathology and Biochemistry, and the Frank Rhodes Distinguished Professor of Cardiovascular Biology and Genetics * Allan McLane Hamilton, Professor of Psychiatry at Cornell Medical College * Yoon Kang, Richard P. Cohen, M.D. Professor of Medical Education and the senior associate dean for education * Ben Kean, Professor of Medicine, founder of the Tropical Medicine Unit, chief of the Parasitology Laboratory at New York Hospital, and personal physician to the

Shah of Iran The monarchs of Iran ruled for over two and a half millennia, beginning as early as the 7th century BC and enduring until the 20th century AD. The earliest Iranian king is generally considered to have been either Deioces of the Median dynasty () ...

, whose health and treatment was a factor in the

Iran Hostage Crisis The Iran hostage crisis () began on November 4, 1979, when 66 Americans, including diplomats and other civilian personnel, were taken hostage at the Embassy of the United States in Tehran, with 52 of them being held until January 20, 1981. Th ...

* Otto F. Kernberg, psychiatrist * David Kissane, Professor of Psychiatry and Chairman, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and inaugural Jimmie C. Holland Chair in Psychiatric Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center * Bruce Lerman, cardiologist, the Hilda Altschul Master Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, and Chief of the Division of Cardiology and Director of the Cardiac Electrophysiology Laboratory at Weill Cornell Medicine and the New York Presbyterian Hospital * Fabrizio Michelassi, Lewis Atterbury Stimson Professor and Chairman of the Department of Surgery at Weill Cornell Medicine * John P. Moore, virologist and professor at Weill Cornell Medicine * Georgios Papanikolaou, Former professor of clinical anatomy at Cornell University Medical College, inventor of the

Pap test The Papanicolaou test (abbreviated as Pap test, also known as Pap smear (AE), cervical smear (BE), cervical screening (BE), or smear test (BE)) is a method of cervical screening used to detect potentially precancerous and cancerous processes i ...

* Rajiv Ratan, professor, administrator, scientist, and the Burke Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medicine * Douglas Scherr, surgeon, medical researcher and Clinical Director of Urologic Oncology at Weill Cornell Medicine * Harold E. Varmus, Nobel Prize-winning scientist and the Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine * Radu Lucian Sulica, Professor and Chief, Laryngology and Voice Disorders *

(born Karola Siegel, 1928; known as "Dr. Ruth"),

German American German Americans (, ) are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. According to the United States Census Bureau's figures from 2022, German Americans make up roughly 41 million people in the US, which is approximately 12% of the pop ...

sex therapist, talk show host, author, professor,

Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

survivor, and former

Haganah Haganah ( , ) was the main Zionist political violence, Zionist paramilitary organization that operated for the Yishuv in the Mandatory Palestine, British Mandate for Palestine. It was founded in 1920 to defend the Yishuv's presence in the reg ...

sniper

References

External links

Official website
{{authority control 1898 establishments in New York City Academic health science centres Colleges and schools of Cornell University Cornell University Cornell University campuses Ivy League medical schools NewYork–Presbyterian Healthcare System NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital Satellite campuses Schools of medicine in New York City Universities and colleges established in 1898 Universities and colleges in Manhattan