Frederick Chapman Robbins, MD

Born: August 25, 1916
Died: August 4, 2003

Major Contribution:

Frederick C. Robbins won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1954 along with John F. Enders and Thomas H. Weller, for their discovery announced in "Cultivation of the Lansing strain of poliomyelitis virus in cultures of various human embryonic tissue" published in Science in 1949. Robbins was the senior author of the article.

Other Information:

Brief Biography: Robbins was born in Auburn, Alabama, and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. He graduated from the University of Missouri and received his medical degree from Harvard. His training as a pediatrician at Children's Hospital in Boston was interrupted by World War II. He joined Drs. John F. Enders and Thomas H. Weller at the Research Division of Infectious Diseases at Children's Hospital of Boston (Harvard) after the war.

In 1952, he left Harvard to become a professor at Western Reserve University and the chief of pediatrics and contagious disease at Cleveland City Hospital (MetroHealth Medical Center). In the 1980s he was president of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He is credited with developing policy on vaccine development and safety and focusing attention on public policy for AIDS. He worked into his mid-'80s and was professor emeritus at Case Western University.