Longtime UCLA medical school dean Sherman Mellinkoff dies at 96
Dr. Sherman Mellinkoff, who took the newly created UCLA School of Medicine and turned it into a powerhouse of medical research and academics, has died at age 96.
The university said in a statement that Mellinkoff died July 17 at his home near the Westwood campus.
He took over the school in 1962, when it was a decade old and did not yet have its own buildings. He led it for 25 years — a marathon term for a medical school dean. Under his direction, it grew from a few dozen students to classes of 1,500 interns, residents and fellows.
He helped establish multiple organ transplant programs, a comprehensive cancer center and one of the first federally funded centers for research in positron emission tomography, or PET scans.
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