In 1854, the Regents of the University adopted Dr. Gunn's recommendation to separate the disciplines of surgery and anatomy to improve medical education. Corydon L. Ford, MD became the first chair of the Department of Anatomy and during his tenure, women were admitted to the University of Michigan Medical School as we were one of the first major medical schools in the country to accept women. In 1870, the Board of Regents formally approved women as medical students. It was in 1907 that men and women were able to perform anatomical dissections in the same lab.

The department's history is marked with legends who maintained and expanded the academic rigor, including:

• G. Carl Huber (MD 1887) - devoted histologist who created the first PhD program in Anatomy
• Bradley Patten, PhD - author of Human Embryology in 1953 (with the third and last edition in 1968), which was the first widely accepted textbook on human embryology containing 1366 drawings and photographs illustrating a comprehensive account of embryonic development
• Elizabeth Crosby, PhD - neuroanatomist who, in 1936, became the first woman to be a full professor at the Medical School and later received the National Medal of Science from Jimmy Carter

In 1981, under A. Kent Christensen, PhD, the department's name changed to the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, initiating a shift to cellular and next molecular biology. Developmental biology, which evolved from the field of embryology, came into the fold in the late 1980s under the leadership of Bruce Carlson, MD, PhD. The inclusion prompted a name change, made in 2000, to the current Cell & Developmental Biology.