Milton Winternitz led Yale Medical School as its Dean from 1920 to 1935. An innovative, even maverick leader, he not only kept the school from going under, but turned it into a first-class research institution. Dedicated to the new scientific medicine established in Germany, he was equally fervent about "social medicine" and the study of humans in their culture and environment. He established the "Yale System" of teaching, with few lectures and fewer exams, and strengthened the full-time faculty system; he also created the graduate-level Yale School of Nursing and the Psychiatry Department, built numerous new buildings, and much more.