David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

For many years, dating back to when it first affiliated with the University of California in 1873, the UCSF School of Medicine was the only public medical school in California. This made sense in the late 19th century when most of California's population lived in Northern California and Southern California was a lightly populated desert. It no longer made sense by the 1940s, after Los Angeles had overtaken San Francisco to become the leading metropolis on the West Coast of the United States.

Therefore, in 1945, the Board of Regents voted to establish a medical school at UCLA. In 1947, Stafford L. Warren was appointed as the first dean. Warren had served on the Manhattan Project while on leave from his post at University of Rochester School of Medicine. His choice of core faculty consisted of his former associates at Rochester in Andrew Dowdy as the first professor of radiology, John Lawrence as the first professor of medicine, and Charles Carpenter as the first professor of infectious diseases. Along with William Longmire Jr., a 34-year-old surgeon from Johns Hopkins, the group was called the Founding Five.

The building of the medical center and the School of Medicine began in 1949. The 1951 charter class consisted of 26 men and 2 women. Initially, there were 15 faculty members, although that number had increased to 43 by 1955 when the charter class graduated. The first classes were conducted in the reception lounge of the old Religious Conference Building on Le Conte Avenue. Clinical education was initially conducted on the wards of Harbor General Hospital, which today is Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.[2]

In July 1955, the UCLA Medical Center was opened.

Sherman Mellinkoff succeeded Stafford Warren as dean in 1962 and served for the next 24 years. Under Mellinkoff, the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, the UCLA Brain Research Institute, and the Marion Davies Children's Center were founded. The Jules Stein Eye Institute and the Reed Neurological Research Center were established. By decade's end, UCLA had doubled the size of the medical school and the hospital. The UCLA School of Dentistry, School of Public Health, and School of Nursing were formed as well. The medical school grew to nearly 400 medical students, more than 700 interns and residents, and almost 200 master's and doctorate candidates.

A partnership was formed with the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in 1966 to train medical students with the goal of meeting the needs of the underserved in South Los Angeles.

The school continued its growth in the 1970s, becoming affiliated with VA facilities as well as Olive View–UCLA Medical Center. In 1974, the school co-founded the Biomedical Sciences Program with UC Riverside, which offers 24 students each year the opportunity to earn both the B.S. and M.D. degrees in seven years instead of the traditional eight.

1981 saw the dedication of the Doris and Louis Factor Health Sciences Building which houses the School of Nursing and Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. In 1987, construction began on UCLA Medical Plaza, an outpatient facility located across the street from the main hospital.

Kenneth I. Shine succeeded Sherman Mellinkoff as dean in 1986. In 1992 Shine left UCLA to become President of the Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C. Gerald S. Levey was then appointed provost of medical sciences and dean of the medical school in 1994. Levey oversaw expansion of interdisciplinary research and the establishment of a Department of Human Genetics. The Gonda (Goldschmied) Neuroscience and Genetics Research Center, as well as the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, were constructed. In October 2008, Levey announced that he would be stepping down from the position of Dean in 2009.

Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center

Effective February 2010, A. Eugene Washington was appointed Dean of the UCLA School of Medicine and Vice-Chancellor of Health Sciences at UCLA. Washington, a clinician, academician, researcher, and university administrator, was recruited from UCSF, where he served as Vice-Chancellor and Provost, as well as Professor of gynecology, epidemiology, and health policy. Washington is the first African-American to hold these leadership posts at UCLA.[3]

UCLA constructed the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center across the street from the original facility to comply with the California earthquake law. The 1,050,000-square-foot (98,000 m²) hospital is named after the late President of the United States and Governor of California, Ronald Reagan. It was designed by architect I.M. Pei. Patients were transferred there from the existing hospital in June 2008.

In the rankings released for 2020, U.S. News & World Report ranked David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA at No. 6 in the U.S. in research and for 2019-2020 ranked UCLA Medical Center at No. 6.[4]