Coleman Memorial Laboratory

The Otolaryngology Department enjoys a rich history in hearing research that began with the establishment of the Coleman Laboratory in 1921. The family of John C. and Edward Coleman, Cornish immigrants whose fortune was initially established in the California gold fields, was plagued by progressive, hereditary deafness. .

In 1938, artist Bernard Zakheim painted a series of murals in Toland Hall depicting the history of medicine in California. The depicted section of the large mural includes a reference to the Coleman Memorial Fund (lower left)

Edward Coleman died childless in 1913. John Coleman, ten of whose children survived him, died in 1919. One of his sons, George Edward Coleman, was a graduate of the University of California. George Edward then trained at the Pasteur Institute in Paris before returning to UC to work with the Hooper Foundation. Enthusiastic about the successful work of the Hooper Foundation the contribution its staff was making in the fields of health and medicine, Coleman looked for an appropriate outlet for his personal research contribution. George Edward convinced his nine brothers and sisters to participate in the creation of a Foundation that endowed a research laboratory established for them by the University of California Board of Regents. The John C. and Edward Coleman Memorial Laboratory memorialized the benefactors’ father and their uncle. When the Otolaryngology Laboratory moved to its present quarters in the Health Science East tower in 1966, it was officially named the Coleman Memorial Laboratory. It was one of the first endowed research laboratories in the world dedicated to research and education on hearing and deafness.

Representatives of the Coleman family have served continuously as Directors and Trustees of this Foundation, which was supported hundreds of research projects on hearing and deafness and has contributed to the training of several hundred clinicians and scientists in this field from 1921 up to the present.