New York University School of Medicine and its affiliate, the Hospital for Joint Diseases Orthopaedic Institute, have produced many of the great figures in American rheumatology.

NYU's Division of Rheumatology grew out of the Rheumatic Diseases Study Group (RDSG) founded in 1932 by Dr. O. Currier McEwen, a former dean of NYU School of Medicine. Over the years, the RDSG contributed six presidents to the American College of Rheumatology: Drs. O. Currier McEwen, Joseph Bunim, Edward Hartung, Morris Ziff, Gerald Weissmann, and Ira Goldstein.

In 1968 Dr. Edward Franklin succeeded Dr. McEwen as director of the RDSG. Five years later, Dr. Weissmann, who had himself been trained by the RDSG, assumed the directorship of the reorganized Division of Rheumatology in the Department of Medicine.

The Hospital for Joint Diseases became an affiliated teaching hospital of the NYU Medical Center in 1986, and a combined fellowship program was established under the supervision of Dr. Steven B. Abramson. In 1989 Dr. Abramson was named Chair of the Department of Rheumatology and Medicine at the Hospital for Joint Diseases; in 2001 he also assumed the directorship of the NYU Division of Rheumatology.

Dr. Abramson is now in addition to Director of the Division of Rheumatology, Senior Vice President and Vice Dean of Education, Faculty and Academic Affairs, as well as Professor of Medicine and Pathology.