Academic Medicine: Past and Future is a record of a conference that was held at the Rockefeller Archive Center in North Tarrytown, NY, May 25-27, 1982 to evaluate the status of academic medicine and to forecast its future direction.This is particularly important because of increasing emphasis on the basic sciences at the undergraduate college level after the introduction of molecular biology into the college curriculum in the 1950s, the sudden shift in US government policy from emphasis on more medical schools to a reduction in the number of schools and in student enrollment in the late 1970s, and the imbalance of men and women in the various clinical specialties.