The Faculty of Medicine
The current structure of the Faculty of Medicine is the result of a nearly 200-year process of differentiation. Until the faculty reform instituted by the University Act of 1818, there had been initially only one, and later two, professors for theoretical and practical medicine at the university over the course of 350 years. In 1818, four statutory chairs were finally created, increased to eight by the turn of the century. In the second half of the twentieth century, this growth process accelerated significantly.
Today, the Faculty of Medicine is divided into nine units, whose shared vision is the realization of a university medical center. Jointly supported by the University of Basel and the cantons of northwestern Switzerland, the aim is to combine medical research, teaching, and services under a unified leadership and decision-making structure. Wider partnerships of support and the division of the faculty into departments are among the latest developments at the Faculty of Medicine, playing a crucial role in its shift toward more autonomy alongside the dual sponsorship of the university by two cantons.
The units within the Faculty of Medicine include the Departments of Biomedicine and Public Health, as well as Dentistry, Operative Medicine, Interdisciplinary Subjects, Internal Medicine/Neurology, Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Specialized Medicine. The number of professorships has risen to 120, including 42 structural chairs and 64 structural extraordinary professorships, in addition to extraordinary chairs awarded to individuals based on personal qualifications, achievements, or reputation and five endowed professorships. The number of professorships in clinical subjects (86) is significantly higher than in nonclinical subjects (32).
Main areas of research within Faculty of Medicine, such as oncology, immunology, neuroscience, cell plasticity, and tissue repair, as well as clinical morphology and biomedical engineering, make an important contribution to the university’s profile area of “Life Sciences.”
Students at the Faculty of Medicine constitute the third-largest group at the university (approx. 20 percent of all students). Most of the more than 2,000 students are enrolled in medical programs, followed by sports science, dentistry, and nursing science. Women slightly outnumber men. The transition to the Bologna system has also been one of the biggest challenges in recent years facing the Faculty of Medicine.
Faculty with a sense of tradition
The Faculty of Medicine, one of the university’s founding faculties, has a long tradition in the history of medicine and is among the better-researched faculties at the university, especially regarding its early history. Key publications in the history of medicine include Friedrich Miescher-His’s Die Medizinische Facultät in Basel und ihr Aufschwung unter F. Plater und C. Bauhin (The faculty of medicine and its rise under F. Plater and C. Bauhin), created for the university’s four-hundredth anniversary in 1860, Albrecht Bruckhardt’s Geschichte der Medizinischen Fakultät (History of the Faculty of Medicine) from 1917, and Friedrich Rintelen’s Geschichte der Medizinischen Fakultät (History of the Faculty of Medicine) from 1980. One unique piece of research is the volume Erzählte Erfahrung, which contains personal narratives from university alumni. In addition, numerous individual department portraits and shorter studies have been written. This tradition continues on this website for the 550th anniversary of the university, featuring many contributions written by representatives of various medical disciplines.