The department of pharmacology at the University of Minnesota was established in 1913, with Dr. Arthur Hirschfelder appointed as professor and head. The department was a part of the medical school. Before 1913, pharmacology, the study of how chemicals (drugs) interact with the systems of the body, was a speciality within the field of physiology. After Dr. Hirschfelder's death in 1942, Dr. Raymond Bieter was appointed as head, succeeded by Dr. F.E. Shideman in 1962.
Arthur Douglass Hirschfelder was born on September 29, 1879 in San Francisco, California. He earned his B.S. from the University of California in 1897, continuing his education at the Pasteur Institute in Paris (1898-1899), Heidelberg University (1899), Johns Hopkins University, where he earned his M.D. in 1903, and the University of Berlin (1906). Dr. Hirschfelder was an assistant in medicine at Cooper Medical College (1904-1905) and instructor and associate in medicine at Johns Hopkins University (1905-1913) before joining the faculty at the University of Minnesota.
Dr. Hirschfelder joined the faculty at the University in 1913 as professor and head of the newly created department of pharmacology. His areas of research focused on the diseases of the heart and the use of chemotherapy. Arthur Hirschfelder died on October 11, 1942.
From the guide to the Department of Pharmacology papers, 1923-1944, (University of Minnesota Libraries. University Archives [uarc])
