The UCSF School of Medicine is the medical school of the University of California, San Francisco and is located at the base of Mount Sutro on the Parnassus Heights campus in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1864 by Hugh Toland, it is the oldest medical school in California and in the western United States. U.S. News & World Report ranked the school third in research training and second in primary care training; it is the only medical school in the nation to rank among the top three in both categories. Six members of the UCSF faculty have received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and five have received the National Medal of Science.
For fiscal year 2022, UCSF was the top recipient of National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding and awards amongst all U.S. organizations, with $818.3 million in funding across 1,497 awards. The school is affiliated with the UCSF Medical Center, which is ranked, in the 2022-23 U.S. News & World Report rankings, as the 12th best hospital in the United States and third best hospital in the state of California. UCSF faculty have treated patients and trained residents since 1873 at the San Francisco General Hospital and for over 50 years at the San Francisco VA Medical Center.
The UCSF School of Medicine has seven major sites throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and is composed of 28 academic departments, eight organized research units, and five interdisciplinary research centers. The main site is at the Parnassus Heights campus, which is home to the UCSF Medical Center and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute. The UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay opened in 2015 and is home to the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital, UCSF Betty Irene Moore Women's Hospital and the UCSF Bakar Cancer Hospital.
History
The school was founded in 1864 as the Toland Medical College by Hugh H. Toland, a South Carolina surgeon who found great success and wealth after moving to San Francisco in 1852. A previous school, the Cooper Medical College of the University of Pacific (founded 1858), entered a period of uncertainty in 1862 when its founder, Elias Samuel Cooper, died. In 1864, Toland founded Toland Medical College and the faculty of Cooper Medical College chose to suspend operations and join the new school. In 1873 the college affiliated with the University of California. Together with the School of Dentistry, they became UCSF's first two “Affiliated Colleges” and were followed by the College of Dentistry in 1881 and the UC Training School for Nurses in 1907.
The University of California was founded in 1868, and by 1870 Toland Medical School began negotiating an affiliation with the new public university. Meanwhile, some faculty of Toland Medical College elected to reopen the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific, which would later become Stanford University School of Medicine. Negotiations between Toland and UC were complicated by Toland's demand that the medical school continue to bear his name, an issue on which he finally conceded. In March 1873, the trustees of Toland Medical College transferred it to the Regents of the University of California, and the school became "The Medical Department of the University of California."
Initially, the three Affiliated Colleges were located at different sites around San Francisco, but near the end of the 19th century, interest in bringing them together grew. To make this possible, San Francisco Mayor Adolph Sutro donated 13 acres in Parnassus Heights at the base of Mount Parnassus (now known as Mount Sutro). The new site, overlooking Golden Gate Park, opened in the fall of 1898, with the construction of the new Affiliated Colleges buildings. The school's first female student, Lucy Wanzer, graduated in 1876, after having to appeal to the UC Board of Regents to gain admission in 1873. In 1915, the Hahnemann Medical College of the Pacific became a part of the UC medical department.
The University gained more independence in the 1960s when it started to be seen as a campus in its own right instead of as the medical center of the UC system. The four departments were renamed as "School of ..." and the UCSF Graduate Division was founded in 1961. In 1964 the institution obtained full administrative independence under the name University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, becoming the ninth campus in the University of California system and the only one devoted exclusively to the health sciences.