Harvard Medical School

The Harvard Medical School is the medical school of Harvard University. It is a postgraduate teaching center. It is academically highly selective and is located in the Longwood Medical Area section of Boston. It was founded in 1782, being transferred from Cambridge to Boston in 1810.

It has about 650 students in the MD program, 500 in the PhD program, and 130 in the MD-PhD, allowing students to receive their MDs from HMS or their PhDs from either Harvard or MIT. The school has a faculty of nearly 8,000 professors, many of whom work at Boston hospitals affiliated with Harvard University.

History

It is the third oldest medical school in the United States (after the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University). It was founded by John Warren on September 19, 1782, with Benjamin Waterhouse and Aaron Dexter. The first class, composed of two students who graduated in 1788, was taught in Harvard Hall, then in Holden Chapel.

In 1810 it was removed from Cambridge to 49 Marlborough Street in Boston. From 1816 to 1846, the school, known as Massachusetts Medical College of Harvard University, was located on Mason Street. In 1847 it was located in North Grove Street and, later in 1883, in Copley Square. Since 1906 it has been permanently located on Longwood Avenue, where the "Great White Quadrangle" or HMS Quad with its five white marble buildings was established. The field architecture was by the firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge.

Its four teaching hospitals are Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Fifteen researchers have shared nine Nobel prizes for their work done at Harvard Medical School. Among others, Felix Villars taught there.