University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: July 6, 2006

Vern L. Bullough, nursing benefactor

Vern L. Bullough, a SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus and former Buffalo State College faculty member who contributed significantly to nursing education at UB, died of cancer on June 21 in his home in Thousand Oaks, Calif. He was 77.

Bullough gave a gift of $100,000 in 1996 to create the Dr. Bonnie Bullough Endowed Lecture Fund in the UB School of Nursing in memory of his wife and colleague, Bonnie Bullough, dean of the School of Nursing from 1980-91 and a professor on the nursing faculty until 1993. She died in 1996.

Bullough and his wife, strong proponents of preserving nursing history, also presented a gift to UB in 1991 to establish the Bonnie and Vern Bullough History of Nursing Collection in the UB Health Sciences Library.

Bullough worked with his wife over the years to produce a series of nursing texts and reference books. One of the books, "The Care of the Sick: The Emergence of Modern Nursing" (1978), traces the nursing profession from Florence Nightingale to the founding of nursing as a profession in 1873 and examines how the profession grew and reacted to changes in health care.

A native of Salt Lake City, Bullough earned a bachelor's degree in history and languages from the University of Utah in 1951 and a master's degree in history in 1951 and a doctorate in the history of medicine and science in 1954, both from the University of Chicago. He received a bachelor's degree in nursing from California State University, Long Beach in 1981.

He taught at Cal State, Northridge from 1959 until joining the Buffalo State faculty as a professor of history and sociology and dean of the Faculty of Natural and Social Sciences in 1980.

Bullough returned to Northridge as a visiting professor of sociology in 1993. He taught nursing courses at the University of Southern California from 1994-2004.