Albert Einstein College of Medicine

• 1. Founding And Naming Origins

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  In 1945, Yeshiva University President Samuel Belkin began planning a new medical school. He sought to create an institution that would welcome students of all creeds and races. Physicist Albert Einstein wrote a letter to Belkin in 1951 lauding the planned school as being of the greatest importance to American Jewry. Einstein initially refused to lend his name to the project. He had recently declined to become the second president of Israel and had turned down Brandeis University. Instead, he suggested naming the school after Maimonides, a Jewish physician. Two years later, at an event marking his 74th birthday on the 14th of March 1953, Einstein agreed to lend his name. At this gathering, which was his only public appearance in 22 years at the Institute for Advanced Study, Einstein told The New York Times that physics has favored medicine by giving civilized man confidence in the scientific method. The college opened its doors to its first class of 56 students on the 12th of September 1955. Einstein died on the 18th of April 1955, months before the institution's dedication.

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• 2. Campus Expansion And Infrastructure

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  Construction of the first medical school building began in October 1953. This structure, now known as the Leo Forchheimer Medical Sciences Building, featured a contemporary design of steel and concrete. A site in the Bronx's Morris Park was selected due to ample land and proximity to the adjacent Bronx Municipal Hospital. In 1966, the school completed a 375-bed private teaching hospital now known as the Jack D. Weiler Hospital. New York City Mayor John Lindsay presided over its opening. The Ullmann Research Center for Health Sciences, a 12-story facility, opened in 1964. The following year, the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation donated $1.45 million to establish a center named for Rose F. Kennedy. Beginning in 1971, aided by a five-year federal grant of $12,157,000, the college experimented with a three-year MD degree pathway. In 2008, Einstein opened a $225 million research complex called the Price Center. This expansion doubled the size of the campus to nearly 40 acres. In 2024, Ruth Gottesman donated $1 billion to make tuition free for all students.

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• 3. Organizational Evolution And Affiliations

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  Einstein first became affiliated with Montefiore in 1963 when Montefiore attending physicians served as faculty. By 1969, financial troubles led Yeshiva University to contract its Jack D. Weiler Hospital to the Montefiore Medical Center. In 1980, the college's Department of Medicine merged with Montefiore. In the 2010s, Yeshiva University faced mounting financial troubles caused partly by Einstein's high operational costs and an $110 million loss to Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme in 2008. The university transferred ownership of the medical school to Montefiore in 2015. Although deal details were largely kept private, Einstein became a new entity with 51 percent ownership by Montefiore and 49 percent by Yeshiva. Montefiore assumed all operational and financial responsibilities. Yeshiva continued to grant degrees until 2019 when the medical school achieved independent degree-granting authority. In 2021, Yeshiva and Montefiore launched a joint BA/BS-MD program for students entering Yeshiva.

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• 4. Academic Programs And Admissions

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  Admission to Einstein's MD program is highly selective with an acceptance rate of 1.85% in 2024. As of 2025, the school had 789 medical students according to U.S. News & World Report. All students are awarded the full-tuition Gottesman Scholarship. The average post-scholarship cost of attendance for four years is $138,000. New York residents comprise 44 percent of MD students. Einstein hosts one of three inaugural Medical Scientist Training Programs launched by the National Institutes of Health in 1964. These fully-funded dual doctoral programs provide integrated graduate and clinical training. Students receive waived tuition, a stipend, and subsidized housing. The college also offers a Master of Science in Bioethics with Yeshiva's Cardozo School of Law. A five-year Clinical Research Training Program confers a Master of Science requiring an additional year of courses on clinical research methods. An Einstein-CUNY MD-MPH program lasts five years and partners with the City University of New York.

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• 5. Groundbreaking Research Discoveries

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  The first successful coronary artery bypass surgery was performed in 1960 at Einstein by a team led by Robert H. Goetz. Thymosins were discovered in Abraham White's lab at Einstein in 1966. In 1968, Samuel Rahbar confirmed elevated hemoglobin A1c findings with Helen Ranney and first structurally characterized A1c. A1c tests are now the primary method of diabetes management. During the 1980s, researchers made significant discoveries on the emerging HIV/AIDS pandemic due to its high prevalence in the Bronx. Mycobacterium was first genetically manipulated at Einstein by William Jacobs Jr. His large family of strains such as mc2155 are named for Einstein's mass-energy equivalence formula E equals m c squared. In 1979, the mechanism of taxol was identified by Susan Band Horwitz. Researchers mapped the entire nervous system of Caenorhabditis elegans in 2019. The college also hosts over 200 individual laboratories receiving $192 million in funding from the NIH in 2024.

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• 6. Notable Faculty And Alumni

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  Neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks taught at the college for over 40 years. His 1973 book Awakenings documenting his work with encephalitis lethargica in the Bronx was adapted into a 1990 film starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro. Professor Berta Scharrer received the National Medal of Science in 1983 for establishing the concept of neurosecretion. Harry Eagle won the same award in 1987 for developing Eagle's minimal essential medium widely used for cell culture. Salome Gluecksohn-Waelsch received the National Medal of Science in 1993 for her fundamental research on mammalian genetics. Alumnus Charles S. Peskin developed mathematical models for blood flow in the heart and other biological fluids. He was awarded a MacArthur genius grant in 1983. Rudolph Leibel co-discovered the hormone leptin. Lucy Shapiro received the National Medal of Science in 2011 and the Lasker-Koshland Special Achievement Award in Medical Science in 2025 for her work on bacterial genetics that helped found modern developmental biology.

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