The School of Medicine has held classes in physiology since its inception in 1846; physiology was standard content in instruction of medicine. The first Professor of Physiology (and Medical Jurisprudence) was Charles Brodhead Coventry. The department went through successive chairs who were distinguished scientists in the field.

In 1956, Hermann Rahn was named chairman. Due to a decrease in faculty members, Rahn recruited several new faculty who brought new energy to the department. Over the succeeding years faculty members traveled on thirty field expeditions and built the Laboratory of Environmental Physiology. The Laboratory was unusual for a university and houses a human centrifuge and hyperbaric chamber.

The department continues to be a world leader in physiological research and teaches not only its constituent graduate students, but graduate students in dentistry, pharmacy, physical education, physical and occupation therapy, nursing, and students from all basic science departments.

For more information on the history of the Department, see Hermann Rahn's Brief History of Department of Physiology at State University of New York at Buffalo, 1846-1986, published in 1986 in The Physiologist 29:5, Supplemental.