Department History

Originally founded by William MacNider in 1906 as the Laboratory of Pharmacology, UNC boasts one of the ten original departments of pharmacology in the United States. During the first five decades of its existence, the department never exceeded three faculty, and often relied on part-time lecturers, sometimes drawn from the ranks of enrolled medical students, to fulfill its teaching mission. The department admitted its first doctoral candidates in 1968 and first conferred its PhDs in 1971 to Jo Ann Nuite, Ahmed Mahgoub, and James Stephen Kennedy. Under the early leadership of Paul Munson (1965-1976) and John Perkins (1977-1984) the department grew substantially in size, funding and scope. Subsequent chairs Rudy Juliano (1987-2002), Gary Johnson (2003-2016) and Henrik Dohlman (2016-present) have ushered in a new era of scientific prominence, technologies and emerging therapeutics, ranging from stem cells to RNA interference and gene therapy.

Former Faculty Members (Tenured and Tenure-Track)

* Some data are not available and any help is welcome. Please send corrections to hdohlman@med.unc.edu