Isaac Montrose Taylor, M.D., (June 15, 1921 – November 3, 1996 in Boston, Massachusetts) was the dean of the Medical School of the University of North Carolina

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...

 from 1964 until 1971, and the father of James Taylor

James Taylor

James Vernon Taylor is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. A five-time Grammy Award winner, Taylor was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000....

, the singer and guitarist, and four other children, Alex

Alex Taylor (musician)

Alex Taylor was an American singer. Alexander Taylor was the eldest child of Dr. Isaac Taylor and Gertrude Taylor. He was a member of a family which produced a number of musicians, the most famous of whom is James Taylor, but also includes Livingston, Hugh and Kate Taylor.Alex Taylor had two sons,...

, Livingston

Livingston Taylor

Livingston Taylor is an American singer-songwriter, born in Boston, Massachusetts and raised in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He attended the Westtown School in Pennsylvania...

, Hugh, and Kate

Kate Taylor

Kate Taylor is an American folk singer, originally from Boston, Massachusetts.-Biography:Kate was born in Boston and grew up with her four brothers in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where her father was Dean of the medical school at the University of North Carolina...

.
Through his second marriage to Suzanne Francis Sheats, he fathered three more children, Andrew Preston (1983), Theodore Haynes (1986), and Julia Rose (1989).

Students of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill often mistakenly believe the James A. Taylor Student Health Center is named after singer James Taylor's father, because both James A. Taylor and Isaac M. Taylor held administrative positions in health and medicine at UNC and both worked in Boston hospitals.

External links

• UNC Medical School History. It summarises Dr. Taylor and his deanship as follows.

"Dr. Isaac M. Taylor succeeded Dr. Berryhill, who retired from the deanship in 1964, and began the development of community clinical education programs. Dean Taylor instituted many changes as faculty committees carefully reevaluated the school’s curriculum in light of the many changes that had occurred in medical education and the complex roles that physicians were required to fulfill. A new interdisciplinary and more flexible curriculum and a pass-fail, end-of-year examination system began in 1967. The Morehead Fellowship Program in medicine also was established.

During the late 1960s the School of Medicine and the UNC Hospitals expanded with funds obtained through state, federal, and private sources. Projects resulting from these efforts included Berryhill Hall (basic medical sciences teaching facility), the Brinkhous-Bullitt Building (preclinical education building), the Burnett-Womack Building (clinical science building), and the Bed Tower and Spencer Love Clinics in the North Carolina Memorial Hospital.

In mid-1971 the General Assembly approved legislation to create a board of directors for the North Carolina Memorial Hospital and to separate the hospital organizationally from the administration of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Taylor remained as dean of the School of Medicine until June 30, 1971. He was succeeded on September 1, 1971 by Dr. Christopher C. Fordham III."