Yale and the Story of Cell Biology: A Timeline

The following timelines were assembled from the extensive history of Yale Cell Biology compiled by Thomas L. Lentz, MD, Professor Emeritus of Cell Biology. Explore the articles by Dr. Lentz below to learn more about the history of Yale Cell Biology.

Beginnings - 1900

The study of Cell Biology at Yale reaches back to the beginnings of the School of Medicine.

1810: The Connecticut General Assembly grants a charter for “the Medical Institution of Yale College,” which was jointly administered by Yale College and the Connecticut State Medical Society.

1813: The Medical Institution of Yale College opens with 37 students, and the first degrees were conferred the following year. The first campus of the school was located near Grove and Prospect Streets (pictured).

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Anatomy, the field out of which Cell Biology grew, was central to the early medical curriculum.

1813: Jonathan Knight, MD (pictured; 1789-1864), was one of the five original faculty members of the School of Medicine, and its first professor of anatomy. Knight graduated from Yale College in 1808 and received his medical license in 1811. He then studied anatomy under Caspar Wistar at the University of Pennsylvania, under whose guidance he purchased anatomical teaching materials for use in the medical school at Yale.

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The ancient practice of dissection, valuable to the study of the human body, caused a scandal at Yale.

In 1824, a farmer from West Haven discovered that the body of his 19-year old daughter, Bathsheba, buried two days earlier, was missing from the Grove Street cemetery in New Haven. A recent spate of grave robbing by Yale students to find cadavers for anatomy instruction led the farmer to the doors of the medical school, across the street from the cemetery. He demanded to search the building.

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The body of Bathsheba was found in the cellar of the school under a large flat stone. As news spread of the grave-robbing scandal, hundreds set upon the School of Medicine during several days of riots, and medical students took up arms to defend the school.

The riots were quelled when the Governor’s foot guard in full regalia and muskets were called out. An accused medical student fled the state, and an assistant at the school was convicted.

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The essential instrument of Cell Biology, the microscope, has a history at Yale as long as the school itself.

1734: Yale purchased a Culpeper/Loft “double microscope” from Edward Scarlett in London for three pounds and three shillings.

1789: President Stiles listed “a microscope” among the available “machines for a course in experimental philosophy.”

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The School of Medicine grows, and moves to 150 York Street

1862: The first microscopy laboratory at the medical school was established at 150 York Street, the building that housed the medical school from 1860 to 1925. The lab was led by Moses Clark White ‘54 (1819-1900), appointed Instructor in Microscopy and Botany in 1862, and then Professor when the Yale Corporation authorized a chair in Pathology and Microscopy in 1867. White served as medical examiner for New Haven from 1883 until his death in 1900. He wrote widely on microphotography and the study of bloodstains.

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The study of the human body deepens with the rise of Histology and Pathology at Yale.

In the 19th century, histology was a new and rapidly developing modern science, and to remain relevant and competitive, Yale increased its representation in this emerging field. This followed the seminal work of “the father of modern pathology,” Rudolph Virchow, who in 1858 articulated the essence of cell theory: omnis cellula e cellula (“every cell is derived from a [preexisting] cell”). As a result, he said, all diseases are essentially disturbances of cells.

Few American schools had facilities for histology at this time. The Yale catalog of 1869 read: “It is believed that no institution in this country furnishes the student greater facilities for acquiring exact knowledge in this department.”

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The 1878 medical school catalog: “The Lectures on Histology and Pathology are illustrated by the daily use of five or six compound achromatic microscopes, on which two sets of preparations are exhibited at every lecture. In this manner the principal microscopic structures both natural and pathologic, including urinary deposits, are exhibited to the students.” Some of the slides used at that time have been preserved.

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The twentieth century to today

A New Home for the School of Medicine, and the Department of Anatomy

1925: In the new Sterling Hall of Medicine, the Department of Anatomy occupied the second, third, fourth floors of the new Cedar Street building. The second floor featured the Anatomy Lecture Hall, staff rooms, a secretary’s office, student research laboratories, the museum, and the museum preparation room. On the third floor, there were three large histology and neuroanatomy teaching laboratories. These three rooms remained essentially unchanged until 1970. An adjacent room served as a histological preparation room and laboratory for the research technician. There were four dissecting rooms and a topographic anatomy and study room. The fourth floor had a bone preparation room, an animal operating room, a recovery room for animals under observation, and a roof for bleaching bones and making corrosion preparations. The sub-basement contained a cadaver storage room, a refrigerator capable of holding six cadavers, a large electrically driven band saw, embalming room, and storage space for skeletons and dissections.

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A new field emerges: Cell Biology

Anatomy departments in the first part of the twentieth century traditionally organized their teaching in four parts: gross anatomy, microscopic anatomy, neuroanatomy, and embryology. As cell biology as a field began to take shape, and faculty became increasingly subcellular and molecular in their approaches, "anatomy" was no longer an appropriate description for the departments. Thus, anatomy departments were modified, combined with other disciplines, or eliminated at many medical schools.

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After World War II, Yale began to seriously build its reputation in the burgeoning field of Cell Biology. Sanford L. Palay, who took some of the earliest electron micrographs of the nervous system, had joined the faculty in 1949. Russell J. Barnett was recruited to Yale from Harvard in 1959, and Thomas L. Lentz joined the faculty in 1964. Walter J. Gehring, a developmental biologist, was an Associate Professor from 1969 to 1972. Barnett’s laboratory featured an RCA EMU 3F electron microscope. A Hitachi HU 11E electron microscope was added in 1975.

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Introducing the Section of Cell Biology

Yale’s preeminence in cell biology began when George Palade (pictured), along with Marilyn Farquhar and James Jamieson, arrived from the Rockefeller Institute and formed the new Section of Cell Biology.

The influential and charismatic George Palade is considered the founder of modern cell biology and received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1974, which he shared with Albert Claude and Christian De Duve. The prize was granted for innovations in electron microscopy and cell fractionation, which laid the foundations of modern molecular cell biology. Palade’s most notable discovery was the ribosomes of the endoplasmic reticulum, which he first described in 1955.

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Together, Palade, Jamieson, and Farquhar (pictured) built a strong and innovative new section. A graduate program in cell biology was also instituted in 1973 when the Section of Cell Biology was formed. Since then, more than a hundred students have received their PhD degrees in the department. In addition, many medical students and MD/PhD students have done their thesis work in the department.

While at Yale, the pioneering Sterling Professor of Cell Biology and Pathology Marilyn Farquhar led influential research focused on secretory granule membranes that merge with cell membranes during exocytosis. She also identified several glomerular components that play a role in glomerular functions.

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The Modern Department

1979: The Sections of Cell Biology and Cytology were merged to form the Section of Cell Biology with George Palade as chairman. The primary faculty at that time consisted of George Palade, Marilyn Farquhar, James D. Jamieson, and Russell J. Barnett (Professors); Thomas L. Lentz (Associate Professor); and Anne Hubbard, Richard Galardy, and J. David Castle (Assistant Professors).

1983: The Section became the Department of Cell Biology with James D. Jamieson (pictured) as chairman. Ari Helenius became Chairman in 1992 followed by Pietro De Camilli in 1997, and Ira Mellman in 2000. Ari Helenius’s research capitalized on the ability of viruses to utilize the membrane traffic machinery to enter and exit cells, using this to investigate the fundamental mechanisms in membrane traffic. Ira Mellman advanced knowledge in the field of endocytosis, antigen presentation, and dendritic cell function. He was named Sterling Professor of Cell Biology in 2002.

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1989: The Center for Cell Imaging (CCI) was formed which today features state-of-the-art facilities for electron and confocal microscopy.

2008: James E. Rothman, Ph.D., was named the Fergus F. Wallace Professor of Biomedical Sciences and the next Chairman of Cell Biology. Rothman was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, together with Randy Schekman and Thomas C. Südhof, for "their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells.”

Photo by Robert A. Lisak