December 1 in Medical History
17 entries: discoveries, epidemics, drugs and the people who shaped medicine.
Observed today
- World AIDS Day, and its related observances: — Day Without Art
Events
- The New York Daily News reports the first successful sex reassignment surgery, headlining "Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty"
- First World AIDS day to raise awareness of the global AIDS epidemic
- First "Day Without Art" artists protest against AIDS (now known as Visual AIDS)
- "U2 Minus 1" performs at Times Square in New York City for World AIDS Day; Bruce Springsteen and Coldplay's Chris Martin each sing two songs in place of injured frontman Bono
- The UN admits its peacekeepers are responsible for the cholera epidemic in Haiti in 2010 that kills 30,000 people
- The outbreak of coronavirus infection begins in Wuhan.
Born on this day
- Anna KomneneByzantine medical doctor and scholar (died 1153)
- Tadeáš HájekCzech naturalist, physician and astronomer, born in Prague, Kingdom of Bohemia (d. 1600)
- Martin RodbellAmerican biochemist (1994 Nobel Prize for medicine or Physiology for discovery of G-proteins), born in Baltimore, Maryland (d. 1998)
- Marie BashirAustralian psychiatrist, academic, and politician, 37th Governor of New South Wales (died 2026)
- Victor AmbrosAmerican geneticist (2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovery of microRNA), born in Hanover, New Hampshire
Died on this day
- Willem ten RhijneDutch physician in Batavia, dies at about 53
- Louis LewinGerman toxicologist (father of psychopharmacologist), dies at 79
- Leon WachholzPolish scientist and medical examiner (born 1867)
- J. B. S. HaldaneBritish-Indian geneticist (primordial soup theory), dies at 72
- Dimitrios TrichopoulosGreek epidemiologist, oncologist, and academic (born 1938)