The founding dean of the UNMC College of Pharmacy was Rufus Lyman, M.D. (1875-1957), who served from 1915 to 1946. Although educated as a physician, Lyman was always interested in pharmacology and became a national leader in the field of pharmacy education.
He was born in the small southeast Nebraska town of Table Rock, and then earned his B.A. (1897), M.S. (parasitology-1899), and M.D. (1903) degrees from the University of Nebraska.
After graduation, he practiced medicine in Omaha and was appointed as an instructor of physiology and pharmacology in the College of Medicine. In 1905, he moved to Lincoln, where the basic science courses of the college were taught, and became professor of pharmacodynamics (later called pharmacology).
It was largely through Lyman’s efforts that a School of Pharmacy was approved by the Board of Regents in April 1908, and in 1910 he was appointed director of the school.
He promoted the new school in an article in the “Omaha Druggist” in June 1908, writing “The universal awakening manifested by both the medical and the pharmaceutical professions regarding the manufacture, dispensing, and sale of drugs and poisons, together with the passage of the national [Pure] Food and Drug Act [1906] and local legislation in the various states, has placed upon pharmacy, pharmaceutical chemistry and allied sciences an importance never before enjoyed.”
The school became a college in 1915, with Lyman as the first dean. He also served as chairman of the department of physiology and pharmacology in the College of Medicine and as director of the department of student health services on the Lincoln campus.
During his career, he was a leading figure in American pharmaceutical education, as a progressive educator, as founding editor of the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education (1937-1955), and as one of the most influential figures in the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy.
Pharmacy Hall on the Lincoln campus opened in 1918. It was replaced in 1958 by Lyman Hall, a new building for the college, named in Lyman’s honor. When this building became outdated, the college moved to Omaha in 1972 as a unit of UNMC, and in 1976 moved into the COP building. In 2014, the building was renamed the Joseph D. and Millie E. Williams Science Hall.
When Lyman retired as pharmacy dean in 1946, he accepted an opportunity to become founding director of the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy, a position he held from 1947-1950, thus becoming the founder of pharmacy schools at two state universities.