Key dates
From Faculty of Medicine Online Museum and Archive
Contents |
19th Century
1850s
1850 The University of Sydney was founded.
1856 13 June The Faculty of Medicine was formally created on 13 June when the Senate appointed a Board of Examiners that included Professor John Smith, Professor of Chemistry and Experimental Physics and eight Sydney medical practitioners.
Professor John Smith was the first Dean of the Faculty of Medicine.
1870s
1874 By 1874 there had been 11 successful candidates for the MB examination.
1880s
1882 Royal Prince Alfred Hospital was the University's first teaching hospital.
1883 The medical school commenced teaching in March with four students in a four-roomed cottage built between the Great Hall and Parramatta Road. Initially the medical curriculum was five years with the first year spent in the the Faculty of Arts.
1883 Sir Thomas Anderson Stuart was the second Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. To strengthen the Faculty's teaching staff, he turned to the Edinburgh Medical School and recruited Alexander MacCormick, Robert Scot Skirving, James Thomas Wilson and David Arthur Welsh.
1888 The Medical Society was formally recognised by Senate.
1890s
1890 JT Wilson became Professor of Anatomy when Anderson Stuart relinquished the position to concentrate on his other duties.
The medical course was lengthened to five years.
1891 The first part of the Anderson Stuart Building was completed.
1893 The Faculty of Medicine had been training for 10 years. Now 100 students had enrolled in the first year of medical training.
The first female medical students, Iza Coghlan and Grace Robinson, graduated.
20th Century
1909 Sydney Hospital becomes a teaching hospital of the University of Sydney.
1920s
1920 J T Wilson becomes the third Dean of the Faculty of Medicine.
1922 The Anderson Stuart building was completed.
1923 St Vincent’s Hospital becomes a teaching Hospital of the University of Sydney. This hospital was later to become a teaching hospital of the UNSW.
1925 A E Mills becomes the fourth Dean of the Faculty Medicine.
1926 The Medical Program was extended to six years.
D A Welsh becomes the fifth Dean of the Faculty of Medicine.
1930s
1930 C G Lambie was appointed to the first full time Chair of Medicine.
J C Windeyer becomes the sixth Dean of the Faculty of Medicine.
Sir Harold Dew was appointed to the first full-time Chair of Surgery.
The School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine was established, funded by the federal government and controlled jointly by the government and the University.
1932 Sir Charles Bickerton Blackburn becomes the seventh Dean of the Faculty of Medicine.
1933 The medical school outgrew the Anderson Stuart Building and the University received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to construct a new building.
The Blackburn Building, named in honour of Sir Charles Bickerton Blackburn who was Dean of the Faculty from 1932 to 1935 and Chancellor of the University from 1941 to 1964, was opened to clinical students.
1936 Sir Harold Dew becomes the eighth Dean of the Faculty of Medicine.
1940s
1947 Royal North Shore becomes a teaching hospital of the University of Sydney.
1950s
1952 Sir Edward Ford becomes the ninth Dean of the Faculty of Medicine.
1956 The Faculty of Medicine was 100 years old.
1957 B T Mayes becomes the tenth Dean of the Faculty of Medicine.
1960s
1960 Frank Rees Magarey becomes the eleventh Dean of the Faculty of Medicine.
1965 The Bosch Building was erected on a site adjoining the Blackburn Building. Lecture theatres were opened in 1965. The Bosch Building was named in honour of George Henry Bosch, a Sydney businessman who has been the Faculty's greatest benefactor. Through Bosch's generosity, full-time chairs in histology and embryology, medicine, surgery, and bacteriology were established between 1927 and 1930.
1966 Sir John Loewenthal becomes the twelfth Dean of the Faculty of Medicine.
1970s
1972 DC Maddison becomes the thirteenth Dean of the Faculty of Medicine.
1974 RS Gye becomes the fourteenth Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and the first full-time Dean.
1978 Westmead Hospital becomes a University of Sydney teaching hospital. It was the first hospital, since Royal Prince Alfred, to be built as a teaching hospital.
1980s
1983 The Centenary of the Medical School at the University of Sydney was celebrated.
1986 The five-year curriculum which had been introduced 12 years earlier was replaced by a revised six-year course.
1987 The School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine closed and the School of Public Health was established with funds from the then Commonwealth Department of Health and Family Services.
1989 John Atherton Young becomes the fifteenth Dean of the Faculty of Medicine.
1990s
1991 The Canberra Clinical School opens.
1992 The Faculty took the major decision to move to a four-year, graduate-entry curriculum with a completely new admissions process and a new curriculum based largely on problem based and self directed learning.
1995 The Children's Hospital moved from Camperdown to Westmead.
1997 The first students were admitted to the new, Graduate-entry, University of Sydney Medical Program.
Stephen Leeder becomes the sixteenth Dean of the Faculty of Medicine.
Broken Hill University Department of Rural Health (BHUDRH) is created.
21st Century
2000s
2001 Dubbo Clinical School commenced its operation.
The Northern Rivers Department of Rural Health (NRUDRH) was established.
2002 Andrew Coats becomes the seventeenth Dean of the Faculty of Medicine.
2004 The new facilities of the School of Rural Health, based in Dubbo, were officially opened.
2005 The combined Science-Medicine degree was offered for the first time.
2006 The Faculty of Medicine celebrated its 150th anniversary.
The Canberra Clinical School was transferred to the Australian National University Medical School.
2007 Professor Bruce Robinson was appointed eighteenth Dean of the Faculty of Medicine.