Honoring an Early Founder of Pharmacy School

Jacob Diner was a revolutionary pharmacist of his time and founded the Fordham Pharmacy School, as well as many pharmaceutical programs in New York.  Hailing from Russian and Jewish roots, Diner was raised in Germany but moved to New York to pursue his education, earning a medical degree from Fordham University.  He returned to the university later on to found the pharmacy school and become the dean of the college for twenty years after.

He had a harder struggle than many other pharmacists of the time because he had a problem of his nationality (he had no birth certificate from Russia or Germany) and due to his Jewish roots.  However, Diner proved his worth within the pharmaceutical industry and was well known in many pharmaceutical circles as a pioneer in the industry.  The Fordham School of Pharmacy was founded in 1912 and Diner continued to be the dean of the college until 1932.  While there have been many pioneers of pharmacy and pharmacy school since this time, Diner represents one of the first who struggled to make a pharmacy school that accepted students of all backgrounds in a city that was known as the melting pot of the nation.

Pharmacy school  has now become a widely accepted college of many major universities and is usually found within large state schools, much different from the time of Diner in the early twentieth century.  Diner would be impressed with pharmacy school of our time, not only because of its prominence within the nation, but because of the progress the pharmaceutical industry has made since his time.  The drug industry has grown exponentially, namely due to early pioneers of the pharmacy school programs which helped expand the industry within the country.  We now all have easy access to pharmacies in most cities and can therefore combat many illnesses with revolutionary breakthroughs that have occurred within many drugs.  Diner helped contribute to this change, nearly a century ago, by proving that any university can have a pharmacy school and anyone can be a pharmacist.
 

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