Graduation from Peking Union Medical College

In 1939, Tsai-Fan Yu received her medical degree from Peking Union Medical College (PUMC), graduating with highest honors. Although the precise day of graduation is not recorded in available sources, the year marks a decisive turning point in her life and in women’s participation in Chinese and global medicine.

PUMC, established with Rockefeller Foundation support and modeled on leading North American institutions, had extremely competitive admissions and rigorous training. Yu’s full scholarship and top‑rank performance demonstrated her exceptional abilities at a time when few women were admitted to elite medical schools. Her achievement positioned her to become, shortly thereafter, the first woman appointed chief medical resident in internal medicine at PUMC, underscoring her leadership within a male‑dominated profession.

Graduating in 1939, on the eve of major wartime disruptions in China, Yu carried with her a Western‑style medical education that later allowed her to move to the United States and integrate rapidly into its academic hospitals. This credential was foundational for her later work on gout at Mount Sinai Hospital, where her clinical precision and research training were repeatedly noted by colleagues.

In the broader history of women in science and medicine, Yu’s completion of her medical degree with highest honors exemplifies how a woman from Republican‑era China could leverage educational opportunities to become a global pioneer in a specialized field such as rheumatology.