Robbins, Frederick Chapman

(b. 25 August 1916 in Auburn, Alabama; d. 4 August 2003 in Cleveland, Ohio), virologist, pediatrician, and Nobel Prize winner.

Robbins was the eldest of the three children of William Jacob Robbins, a professor of plant physiology, and Christine (Chapman) Robbins, also a botanist. When Robbins was two the family moved to Columbia, Missouri, where his father became the chair of the department of botany at the University of Missouri. When Robbins was twelve the family moved to Europe for two years, where Robbins attended the Sillig Institute in Vevey, Switzerland. When he returned to Columbia, Robbins entered David H. Hickman High School as a junior at the age of fourteen. A gifted athlete and a superb student, Robbins played football in high school and polo at the University of Missouri, which he entered in 1932 as a member of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. Robbins in 1936 received an AB and in 1938 a BS in premedical studies from Missouri and then transferred to Harvard Medical School, from which he received his MD in 1940. When Robbins began his training in pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Boston, affiliated with Harvard, students were required to spend one year in the laboratory before seeing patients. Although he had not intended to pursue a research career, Robbins’s year-long immersion in diagnostic bacteriology sparked an interest in the study of infection.

In 1942 Robbins interrupted his medical training to enter the U.S. Army. Because of his experience in bacteriology and virology, Robbins was assigned to the Fifteenth Medical General Laboratory as the chief of the virus and rickettsial disease section, a unit responsible for monitoring, studying, and controlling outbreaks of disease among troops and civilians. Robbins was sent from Washington, D.C., to North Africa and then to Naples, Italy, where he investigated outbreaks of infectious hepatitis and typhus and identified a rickettsial infection called Q fever as the cause of an outbreak of pneumonia. Robbins was awarded a Bronze Star for meritorious service and in 1946 left the army having achieved the rank of major. Robbins returned to Children’s Hospital and to pediatrics, first as an assistant resident and then becoming the chief resident.

Robbins returned to research in 1948. He received a National Research Council fellowship in virology and reported to the laboratory run by John F. Enders in the research division of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital to work on culturing viruses. Also in 1948 Robbins met Alice Havermeyer Northrop, a research assistant, whose father, John H. Northrop, had been a Nobel laureate in chemistry. The couple married at her parents home in Princeton, New Jersey, on 19 June 1948 and had two children.

Working together, Robbins, Enders, and the research scientist Thomas H. Weller immediately began developing a strategy for growing viruses in tissue culture. Bits of tissue were placed in small flasks with a nutrient fluid. The flasks were incubated at body temperature, and every few days the nutrient fluid was removed and replaced. Changing the nutrient fluid regularly kept the tissue viable longer and made it possible to consistently and successfully grow viruses in substantial quantities.

Robbins and Weller did not expect much when Enders suggested that because they had some poliovirus stored in a freezer, they might try inoculating some of their tissue cultures with that virus. Other researches had attempted to culture the poliovirus but had failed. To their surprise, Robbins, Enders, and Weller found that using their technique they were able to grow the poliovirus in many kinds of tissue. Their ability to culture large quantities of pure poliovirus led to the development of polio vaccines by Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin.

In studying viruses in tissue culture, Robbins also observed and identified what Enders called the cytopathic effect: cells in cultures inoculated with viruses died more quickly than cells in noninfected, control cultures. The team found that cell death, which leads to a change in the acidity of a culture fluid, can be detected by use of an indicator dye in the culture medium. The ability to observe cell death in tissue culture provided a way of identifying and typing viruses quickly and easily without having to infect animals.

Toward the end of his fourth year working in Enders’s laboratory, Robbins began to consider offers from other researchers, including Salk, but accepted a position at Western Reserve University (later renamed Case Western Reserve University) in Cleveland. Robbins and his family moved to Ohio in May 1952, and Robbins became a professor of pediatrics at the university and the director of the department of pediatrics and contagious diseases at Cleveland City Hospital (renamed MetroHealth Medical Center).

In October 1954 Robbins, Enders, and Weller were informed that they had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for the discovery of the ability of poliomyelitis viruses to grow in cultures of various types of tissue.” The discovery revolutionized virus research and led to the development a usable vaccine for polio. Robbins was thirty-eight years old, the youngest member the team.

Robbins was much admired as a pediatrician, teacher, and researcher at Case Western Reserve University. He was described as modest but friendly and outgoing and tireless in his work. In 1966 Robbins was named the dean of the medical school, a position he held until 1980, when he resigned to become the president of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. Robbins continued his affiliation with Case Western Reserve University for more than fifty years. He developed a program designed to enrich the lives of hospitalized children. Run by a nursery school teacher appointed by Robbins, the program influenced the practice of pediatric medicine in hospitals nationwide. In the mid-1980s, having become increasingly concerned about acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), Robbins brought together scientists from Case Western and the National Institutes of Health and government officials in Africa to establish an AIDS and tuberculosis research program in Uganda. In 1990 Robbins helped to launch the Case Western Reserve University Center for Adolescent Health. He became the center’s director in 1992.

Robbins was an avid reader of books of all kinds and a member of the Rowfant Club, a forum for the critical study of books. Robbins and his family vacationed in Maine each summer, where they spent time hiking, sailing, and playing tennis. Robbins died of congestive heart failure on 4 August 2003 in a hospital in Cleveland. He was eighty-six. His remains were cremated, and in a private ceremony his family scattered his ashes in the garden of their summer home in Maine.

The laboratory research methods developed by Robbins and his colleagues have been used by scientists around the world to isolate and identify viruses. Robbins’s contributions to the practice of medicine and his and his colleagues’ discoveries have enabled scientists and physicians to improve the lives of millions of people.

Frederick C. Robbins and Thomas M. Daniel, eds., Polio (1997), contains an autobiographical essay by Robbins, “Reminiscences of a Virologist,” in which he describes some of the highlights of his career. Edward D Berkowitz, A History of the Institute of Medicine (1999), describes Robbins’s work at the Institute of Medicine. Istvan Hargittai, The Road to Stockholm (2002), describes Robbins and colleagues’ path to the Nobel Prize. Obituaries are in the New York Times and Cleveland Plain Dealer (both 5 Aug. 2003).

Bonnie LaFave