Numa Pompilius Garfield Adams

Numa Pompilius Garfield Adams served as Dean of Howard University’s College of Medicine from 1929 until his death in 1940. He was the first African American to hold this position. As dean, he significantly improved the curriculum, attracted highly trained professors to join the faculty, and increased the number of African American physicians in the country. 

To help pay for high school, college, and medical school, he played cornet and saxophone in orchestras such as the Lyric Orchestra and Louis Brown’s Orchestra. He was educated at Howard University (B.A., magna cum laude, 1911), Columbia University (M.A. in chemistry, 1912), and the University of Chicago’s Rush Medical School (M.D., 1924). Adams interned in a St. Louis, Missouri, hospital and taught neurology and psychiatry to nursing students at Provident Hospital. After earning his master’s degree in chemistry, he served on the faculty of the chemistry department at Howard University. He was also assistant medical director of the Victory Life Insurance Company from 1927 to 1929. 

Adams is remembered for his leadership in developing a medical school faculty that was second to none. He increased the acceptance standards for students to the university. In his final years as dean, he proposed the integration of Howard University and Freedmen’s Hospital (now Howard University Hospital), a merger that was completed in 1940. Adams also served as a member of the National Medical Association (and was on the editorial board of its journal), the board of directors of the Tuberculosis Association of the District of Columbia, the Advisory Health Council of Washington, the Council on Social Agencies, and the Cook County Physicians Association in Illinois.