16 Facts About Robert Huebner

Robert Huebner was born in Cheviot, Ohio, a western suburb of Cincinnati, on February 23, 1914.

Robert Huebner decided he wanted to become a physician and did his premed undergraduate training at the University of Cincinnati.

Robert Huebner attended the Saint Louis University School of Medicine starting in 1938.

Robert Huebner was threatened with expulsion from the school after officials there discovered that he had taken outside work to pay for his education in violation of school policy — including a job as a bouncer at a brothel — but stayed in school and graduated in 1942.

Robert Huebner graduated in June 1942, ranked in the top five of his class of 100.

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Robert Huebner was recognized by the American Society of Tropical Medicine for his efforts with the Bailey K Ashford Award in 1949, which included a $1, 000 prize from Eli Lilly and Company that he later used as a down payment for a farm in Frederick, Maryland.

Robert Huebner's first work on Q Fever was a report he had done on an outbreak of 18 cases that occurred in early 1946 in an NIH laboratory, where he showed a correlation between a spike in cases and the preparation of antigens in yolk sacs, and he prepared another report on a group of 47 patients being treated for the condition at the Public Health Service Hospital in Baltimore.

Robert Huebner was sent in spring 1947 to investigate an outbreak at milk farms in the Los Angeles area, in which there was a dense population of farms in which the animals had little space, creating what Huebner called "unpasturized cows".

Robert Huebner found the cause to be a member of the rickettsia family that was found in containers of unpasteurized milk.

In contrast to medical wisdom in the 1960s and 1970s, Robert Huebner was confident that viruses were a cause of cancer in humans and convinced the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare to provide $60 million in grants to fund research on the connection as part of the War on Cancer.

Robert Huebner took a position in 1968 as chief of the National Cancer Institute's Laboratory of Viral Carcinogenesis, staying there until his retirement in 1982.

Robert Huebner was inducted into and participated actively in the United States National Academy of Sciences.

Robert Huebner's children were each given the task of raising an American Angus bull to help pay for their college education.

Robert Huebner died at age 84 due to pneumonia on August 26, 1998, at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, where he had been a resident since 1991.

Robert Huebner had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in the early 1980s.

Robert Huebner was survived by his second wife, Harriet, as well as by six daughters, two sons and 11 grandchildren.