Notable and Historical Figures

Community mental health pioneer and New York Medical College professor emeritus Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Phyllis Harrison-Ross, M.D.
School of Medicine

Hometown: Detroit, Michigan
Born: August 14, 1936
Died: January 16, 2017

Trained as a psychiatrist as well as a pediatrician, Phyllis Harrison-Ross, M.D., professor emeritus, served on the faculty of the New York Medical College School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences for more than 25 years.

Widely regarded as a pioneer in the community mental health profession, Dr. Harrison-Ross had a remarkably diverse career as a hospital clinical administrator, researcher, academician, public health consultant, forensic and child psychiatrist and public educator.  She focused her administrative and clinical talents on serving diverse, hard-to-reach, and underserved populations, including the incarcerated.

As director and chief of service, Department of Psychiatry and the Comprehensive Community Mental Health Center at Metropolitan Hospital Center in New York City, Dr. Harrison-Ross led a multidisciplinary staff of 600 (including 100 physicians), and oversaw adolescent and child in-patient and out-patient services, day treatment programs, community outreach, mobile crisis and emergency services, and drug and alcoholism counseling. The hospital’s mental health center served an estimated one million patients each year during her tenure. 

Dr. Harrison-Ross was one of the early pioneers of telepsychiatry, and considered the technology “revolutionary” for African Americans living in areas where no or few African American psychiatrists practiced. She also used telepsychiatry with hard-to-reach populations such as inmates, and armed services personnel stationed in remote locations.

Dr. Harrison-Ross’s development of a curriculum and an Academy of Issues in Psychiatry for Black Populations, initially created for use with her students at NYMC, went on to be used in APA medical education workshops. She authored several books, including Getting it Together, a psychology high school textbook, and The Black Child: A Parent’s Guide; and served as a moderator of the television show, All About Parents. 

She received the APA Solomon Carter Fuller Award for distinguished service to improve the lives of African American people in 2004.  

Phyllis Anne Harrison, M.D., passed away on January 16, 2017, at the age of 80.

Israel Simon Kleiner, Ph.D., served as acting dean of New York Medical College (NYMC) from 1921-1922 and dean from 1922-1925.

Born in New Haven, Conn., Dr. Kleiner graduated from Yale University with a Ph.B. (1906) and Ph.D. (1909) in physiological chemistry. He is credited as being the first to demonstrate the effect of extracts from the pancreas causing hypoglycemia which eventually helped lead to the discovery of insulin. 

Dr. Kleiner came to NYMC in 1919 as a professor of physiological chemistry. After retiring from the deanship in 1925, he continued to serve on the faculty and in 1948 he became the director of the Department of Physiological Chemistry. Dr. Kleiner co-authored highly regarded textbooks such as Human Biochemistry (with James M. Orten) and Laboratory Instructions in Biochemistry (with Louis B. Dotti). Prior to joining NYMC, Dr. Kleiner worked at the Rockefeller Institute and served on the faculty of Tulane University. 

He was the 1959 recipient of the Van Skye Award in Clinical Chemistry from the New York Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Kleiner passed away in New York City on June 15, 1966, at 81 years old.

First graduate of New York Medical College of African descent.
Haitian consul to the Bahamas.

Hometown: Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Born: September 21, 1865
Died: November 28, 1943

Alonzo Potter Burgess Holley, M.D., was the first graduate of New York Medical College of African descent to graduate from New York Medical College, completing the program in 1888. He attended Cambridge University as an undergraduate. After graduation from New York Medical College, Dr. Potter Burgess Holley was appointed by the Haitian government as a consul to the Bahamas, where he remained for twelve years. He also served as the Episcopal Bishop of Haiti, the second African American to attain the rank after his father. 

Dr. Potter Burgess Holley served as President of the Florida State Medical, Dental and Pharmaceutical Association and was a member of the National Medical Association.

He authored two books: The problems of our race: Our Duties and Responsibilities and God and the Negro, Synopsis of God and the Negro; or the Biblical Record of the Race of Ham. 

First African American member of the Medical Society of New Jersey, and distinguished physician and public health advocate for the underprivileged African American community of the City of Newark.

Hometown: Newark, New Jersey
Born: March 13, 1886
Died: November 14, 1950

Clarence Sumner Janifer Sr., M.D. 1915, was a groundbreaking African American physician who was the first African American member of the Medical Society of New Jersey in 1916. After graduating from the New York Homeopathic Medical College and Flower Hospital (the College’s name at the time) in 1915 amidst the backdrop of World War I, he volunteered for service in the Medical Reserve Corps in 1917.

As one of the first troops to arrive in France following the declaration of war, Dr. Janifer became an expert in amputations, and in December 1918, received the Croix de Guerre for providing first-hand relief to the wounded.

Upon returning from the war, he worked for the Newark Health Department, serving in extremely economically disadvantaged, segregated neighborhoods where he was charged with running a Well Baby Clinic for African Americans.

Driven by his dream to combat the high mortality rate of African American children, Dr. Janifer (who went on to earn two master's degrees in public health), was frequently published in the the Journal of the National Medical Association on topics corresponding to his experiences in the Well Baby Clinic. His intent was to educate African American mothers and caregivers on the importance of child hygiene and nutrition.

In 1946, he became the second African American physician invited to join the Newark City Hospital as a member of the pediatrics department. In 1948, Dr. Janifer was one of the 42 distinguished citizens honored in the Hall of Fame of the New Jersey Herald Times.

Founding dean, Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Hometown: Austria
Born: September 28, 1903
Died: November 28, 1989

Marcus David Kogel, M.D. 1927, was founding dean of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University. He received his M.D. from New York Medical College in 1927. He served as a chief resident at Metropolitan Hospital in Manhattan from 1927 to 1929.

During World War II, he served as a colonel in the Army, first as director of the department of military sanitation at the Medical Field Service School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and later as medical inspector and chief of preventive medicine in China, where he was awarded the Legion of Merit for his efforts in combating a cholera epidemic. 

Dr. Kogel was New York City Commissioner of Hospitals from 1949-1953. He was named the founding dean of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1955 and held the post until 1967. At the time, Albert Einstein College of Medicine was the first medical school to be built in New York City since the turn of the 20th century.

While at Einstein, Dr. Kogel also established the Department of Preventive and Environmental Medicine and served as its chairman from 1954 to 1960. He also served as dean of the Sue Golding Graduate Division of Medical Sciences and was later named vice president for medical affairs and science at Yeshiva University, serving on its Executive Council and the Academic Council of the graduate schools.

First woman to perform open heart surgery and one of the first African American woman elected a fellow to the American College of Surgeons

Hometown: Tuskegee, Alabama
Born: 1908
Died: January 13, 1977

Myra Adele Logan, M.D., graduated from New York Medical College with an M.D. in 1933. She was the inaugural recipient of the Walter Gray Crump Sr., M.D., Scholarship, created in 1928 specifically to support minority medical students.

After graduation, Dr. Logan became an associate surgeon at Harlem Hospital, where she spent the majority of her medical career. She was also a visiting surgeon at Sydenham Hospital and maintained a private practice.

In 1943, she became the first woman to perform open heart surgery in the ninth operation of its kind performed anywhere in the world. She was also one of the first African American woman elected a fellow of the American College of Surgeons. Dr. Logan’s other achievements include development of antibiotics, including Aureomycin; work on early detection and treatment of breast cancer; and efforts to develop an x-ray processes to more accurately detect differences in tissue density, allowing tumors to be discovered earlier.

Dr. Logan was a founding partner and treasurer of the Upper Manhattan Medical Group of the Health Insurance Plan (HIP), one of the first group practices in the United States. She also worked with the NAACP's Health Committee, the New York State Fair Employment Practices Committee, the National Cancer Committee and Planned Parenthood. She was a member of the New York State Commission on Discrimination during then New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey's administration. In 1944, she resigned from the commission with seven other members after Dewey shelved antidiscrimination legislation they had drafted.

Dr. Logan was also an accomplished classical pianist. She retired in 1970 and later served on the New York State Workmen's Compensation Board. 

She passed away on January 13, 1977, at the age of 68.

Epidemiologist and accomplished writer of medical fiction

John S. Marr graduated from New York Medical College in 1967 and later earned an M.P.H. degree from the Harvard School of Public Health. He attended Yale University as an undergraduate. After graduating from NYMC, Dr. Marr served at the U.S. Army’s Academy of Health Sciences in San Antonio, Texas, where he taught troops preparing to deploy to the Vietnam War about tropical diseases. 

Dr. Marr also served as New York City’s principal epidemiologist where he investigated a number of infectious disease outbreaks, including Legionnaires' disease, typhoid fever, botulism amebiasis and was director of the city’s swine flu response in 1976. He later served as the State Epidemiologist of Virginia. He authored or co-authored more than 55 peer-reviewed journal articles, and co-authored A Century in the Life of the Control of Communicable Disease Manual: 1917 to 2017.

Dr. Marr also wrote several books of fiction. In 1998, Marr published The Eleventh Plague with co-author John Baldwin, a medical thriller described by Kirkus Reviews as “gripping” and “creepy.” He has also written many magazine articles, book reviews, and essays on public health issues. Among them are Alexander the Great and West Nile Virus Encephalitis, Was the Huey Cocolitzli a Hemorrhagic Fever?, Marching to Disaster: The Catastrophic Convergence of Inca Imperial Policy, Sandflies, and El Niňo in the 1524 Andean Epidemic, A New Hypothesis on the Cause of the 1616-19 Epidemic among the Amerindians of New England, The 1802 Yellow Fever Epidemic in Haiti, Yellow Fever Misadventure of 1942, Yellow Fever, Asia and the East African Slave Trade, and The Elephant War Epidemic in Mecca, 570 A.D. He continues to publish articles on historical epidemics and obscure historical infectious disease outbreaks.

New York Medical College School of Medicine
Professor Emeritus of Ophthalmology, New York Medical College

(1870-1958)

Edwin Sterling Munson, M.D.,  graduated from New York Medical College in 1894 and went on to teach at the College, serve as Dean of the Flower-Fifth Avenue Hospital (when it was New York Ophthalmic Hospital), and practice ophthalmology at the Laura Franklin Free Hospital for Children. He attended Princeton University as an undergraduate.

After serving an internship at the Five Points House of Industry, a community center serving what was then one of New York most entrenched slums, Dr. Sterling Munson entered medical practice as an assistant, specializing in ophthalmology.  

Dr. Munson was a member of the Seventh Regiment National Guard, New York at the outset of the First World War, serving for more than twenty years. He was cited for bravery when he operated a first-aid station under fire in the frontline trenches.

Dr. Munson earned an international reputation, and his name lives on in Munson's sign, a V-shaped indentation of the lower eyelid when the gaze is directed downwards, an indication that is characteristic of advanced keratoconus.

Co-discovered saccharin artificial sweetener; one of five founding faculty at Johns Hopkins University

(1846-1927)

Ira Remsen, M.D. 1865, Ph.D., graduated from the New York Medical College School of Medicine in 1865 and later received a Ph.D. from the University of Göttingen in Sweden. He became a research chemist at the University of Tübingen in Germany before returning to the U.S. and joining the faculty of Williams College in Virginia.

While on the faculty there, Dr. Remsen wrote the popular text, Theoretical Chemistry. He would go on to become one‌ of five founding faculty of Johns Hopkins University in Maryland where he also founded the university’s department of chemistry and its school of engineering. He later served as the university’s president, the second in its history. Working in his laboratory, Dr. Remsen co-discovered the artificial sweetener, saccharin.

He founded the American Chemical Journal which he edited for 35 years. His biography notes his influence on the study of chemistry, stating that “he opened up a life work in chemistry as a career to many, and developed a spirit of research that spread over the country.”

Developed surgical procedure for treatment of colon cancer

‌George Watson Roberts graduated from New York Medical College in 1889 with an M.D. after earning a Ph.B. from the University of Vermont in 1887. Dr. Roberts went on to become an attending gynecologist at Flower Hospital in New York City while holding similar positions at other area hospitals. He was a professor of gynecology and a professor of surgery at New York Medical College. He also was a member of the American Institute of Homeopathy, and the New York State and New York County Homeopathic Medical societies and a non-resident lecturer on Clinical Surgery at the University of Michigan.

Lawrence Boris Slobody, M.D. '36, served as acting president of New York Medical College from 1971-72, and as president from 1972-1977. He also served as acting dean from 1965 - 1966.

Dr. Slobody was a pediatrician, author and educator. Born in New York City in 1910, he earned a Bachelor of Science in 1930 from New York University and his M.D. from New York Medical College. Dr. Slobody completed his internship and residency at Metropolitan Hospital.

Dr. Slobody was appointed chief of the Frederick S. Wheeler Laboratory for Nutritional Research at the College in 1943, and was instrumental in College researchers developing early tests for Vitamin C and B deficiencies.

Dr. Slobody was professor and chairman of the Department of Pediatrics from 1948 to 1963, was appointed director of the Center for Maternal and Child Health in 1963, and became vice president and acting dean in 1966.

Dr. Slobody was known for his active development of baby products and his work with those who people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. He developed the first multi-disciplined clinic for diagnosis and treatment of the mentally retarded and people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and was the first Gold Medal recipient of the Association for the Help of Mentally Retarded Children. In 1954, he was the youngest physician elected to the American Pediatric Society.

He received the 1950 award from the Association for the Help of Retarded Children for “the physician who has contributed the most to the help of retarded children.” He was the author of the classic Survey of Clinical Pediatrics (1959), and an author of journal articles related to diaper rashes, mental retardation and medical education.

His positions were many: President of the Medical Board of Metropolitan Hospital; Chairman, Section of Pediatrics of the New York Academy of Medicine; Chairman, Pediatric Advisory Committee of the New York City Department of Health; Vice President of the Coordinating Council for Cerebral Palsy; Chairman, Advisory Committee on Mental Retardation of the New York State Interdepartmental Health Resources Board.

In 1996, he published another book, The Golden Years: A 12-Step Anti-Aging Plan for a Longer, Healthier, and Happier Life (Bergin & Garvey). As Acting Dean, Vice President and eventually President of NYMC, he was instrumental in developing the early departments and sections for Geriatrics. Because of Dr. Slobody’s influence, the New York City Department of Hospitals with the help of the College, established the 2,000-bed Bird S. Coler Center specializing in research and care for the aging.

In retirement, he divided time between Amherst, Massachusetts, and Florida and raised horses, and even edited a book devoted to the Currier and Ives lithographs of American trotting horses. 

Lawrence B. Slobody, M.D. '36 passed away on April 23, 2001, at the age of 90.

Sheila Mary Smythe, M.S., was dean of the Graduate School of Health Sciences later renamed the School of Public Health (today known as the School of Health Sciences and Practice).

Ms. Smythe was appointed dean of the school in 1990 and became an executive vice president of NYMC in 1995. During her tenure at the College, Ms. Smythe doubled the size of the School and helped establish several new programs, including an M.S. in health informatics and clinical research administration; one of the nation’s few medical model M.S. programs in speech-language pathology; and a professional doctorate in physical therapy. She also helped the School achieve accreditation as a School of Public Health.

Prior to NYMC, Ms. Smythe served as president and chief operating officer of Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield, where she worked for twenty years. She previously served as chief health policy adviser in the United States General Accounting Office.

Ms. Smythe served on a national committee of educators working in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control to promote preventive health research, and she was one of 15 public health leaders who served on the Committee on Educating Public Health Professionals for the 21st Century, appointed by the Institute of Medicine. She was president of the Partnership for a Healthy Population, a center for scholarly focus on community health improvement issues in New York’s Hudson Valley. 

Class of 1867, New York Medical College for Women
First Canadian female to graduate with an M.D.

Hometown: Norwich, Ontario, Canada
Born: May 1, 1831
Died: April 29, 1903

‌After being denied entrance to medical school in Toronto, Canada, because the school did not admit women, Emily Howard Jennings Stowe, M.D. 1867, left her native Canada to attend New York Medical College for Women. After graduating in 1867, she began a practice in Toronto, the first Canadian woman to practice medicine in Canada. 

After her experience fighting for acceptance in the medical community, Dr. Stowe became an ardent champion of women’s rights, including suffrage, education and medical education. In 1877, she helped found the influential Toronto Women’s Literary Guild, a group set up to fight for women’s rights and improved working conditions. The Guild is credited with making higher education at select Canadian institutions available to women.

Later in her career, she spearheaded the creation of Woman’s College Hospital in Toronto, and successfully petitioned medical schools in Canada to reverse its discrimination policy and admit women. Dr. Stowe’s own daughter, Augusta, was the was the first woman in Canada to earn a medical degree from a Canadian medical school.

Dr. Stowe was also tireless in her efforts to secure women’s right to vote, serving as President of Dominion Women’s Enfranchisement Association, an organization instrumental in women’s suffrage in Canada. Despite her lifelong efforts, Canadian women did not earn the right to vote until 1917, twelve years after Dr. Stowe’s death.

On April 12, 2018, Dr. Stowe was among six renowned medical pioneers inducted into Canadian Medical Hall of Fame (CMHF).

First African-American woman to earn a medical degree in New York state

Hometown: Brooklyn, New York
Born: 1847
Died: March 7, 1918

When Susan Smith McKinney-Steward, M.D., graduated valedictorian from the New York Medical College for Women in 1870, she was the first African-American woman to ever earn a medical degree in New York state, and the third in the United States.

Dr. Smith was of mixed heritage, her father of African descent and her mother was the daughter of a French officer and a Shinnecock woman. Dr. Smith started attending the medical school just a few years after the Emancipation Proclamation. After graduation, Dr. Smith McKinney-Steward practiced medicine in Brooklyn and Manhattan, specializing in prenatal care and childhood diseases.  She founded The Women's Hospital and Dispensary in Brooklyn which later became The Memorial Hospital for Women and Children.  She was a member of the Kings County and New York State Homeopathic Medical Societies and served as an official physician for the Brooklyn Home for Aged Colored People (now Brooklyn Home for the Aged), one of the early medical institutions in Weeksville, Brooklyn, where Dr. Smith McKinney-Steward was born. She also practiced at New York Medical College and Hospital for Women in Manhattan.

Dr. Smith McKinney-Steward earned medical licenses in Montana and Wyoming after spending several years traveling in these states with her husband, Theophilus Gould Steward, an ordained minister and U.S. Army chaplain. Dr. McKinney-Steward later joined Wilberforce University in Ohio as a resident physician and faculty member teaching health and nutrition.

She was an accomplished public speaker and in 1911 addressed the first Universal Race Congress at the University of London, England, with a presentation “Colored Women in America.”  She later gave a speech, “Women in Medicine,” at the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs Convention. Dr. Smith McKinney-Steward’s was also involved in local missionary work and women’s suffrage advocacy, and was president of the Brooklyn Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

Dr. McKinney-Steward passed away at the age of 71 on March 17, 1918, in Brooklyn. Notable author W.E.B. DuBois gave the eulogy at her funeral, and she was laid to rest in her birth town in the New York City borough of Brooklyn at Green-Wood Cemetery. Junior high school 265 in Brooklyn, Dr. Susan S. McKinney Secondary School of The Arts, is named in her honor. In 1976, black women physicians in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, named their chapter of the National Medical Association in her honor.

First African American woman to be named associate dean of a medical school

Class of 1945, School of Medicine

Jane Cooke Wright, M.D. '45, was the first African American woman to be named associate dean of a nationally recognized medical institution in 1967, and at the time, she was the highest-ranking African American woman at a U.S. medical school. She earned her medical degree, with honors, from New York Medical College in 1945 after an accelerated three-year program.

She completed her residency at Harlem Hospital where she would later join her father, Dr. Louis Wright, at the Cancer Research Foundation at Harlem Hospital. Following Dr. Louis Wright's death in 1952, Dr. Wright was appointed head of the Cancer Research Foundation, at the age of 33.

In 1955, Dr. Wright became an associate professor of surgical research at New York University and director of Cancer Chemotherapy Research at New York University Medical Center and its affiliated Bellevue and University hospitals. Her work analyzed a wide range of anti-cancer agents, explored the relationship between patient and tissue culture response, and developed new techniques for administering cancer chemotherapy.

In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Dr. Wright to the President's Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer, and Stroke.

While pursuing private research at New York Medical College, she implemented a new comprehensive program to study stroke, heart disease, and cancer, and created another program to instruct doctors in chemotherapy. In 1971, Dr. Jane Wright became the first woman president of the New York Cancer Society.  She was a founding member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, (ASCO). Today, ASCO represents 40,000 oncology professionals and is the largest organization of its kind in the world.