Frederick Chapman Robbins

Dr Robbins met his future wife, Alice Havemeyer Northrop while she was working at Dr Weller’s laboratory as a lab technician. Her father, John H Northrop was a Nobel Laureate. The two married in 1948 and were blessed with two daughters: Alice Christine Robbins and Louise E. Robbins

Frederick Chapman Robbins breathed his last on August 4, 2003, in Cleveland, Ohio, at the age of 86.

Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine named ‘Frederick C. Robbins Society’, in his honour.

Frederick Chapman Robbins was born on August 25, 1916 in Auburn, Alabama, to botanists parents, William J Robbins and Christine nee Chapma. His father was a plant physiologist who eventually became the Director of the New York Botanical Gardens.

After completing his preliminary education, Robbins gained admission at the University of Missouri. Therein, he first gained his A.B degree in 1936 and the B.S degree in 1938.

Following his B.S. degree, Robbins enrolled at the Harvard Medical School. He graduated from there in 1940.

Immediately following his graduation from Harvard Medical School, Frederick Chapman Robbins was appointed as a resident physician in bacteriology at The Children's Hospital Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts. For the next two years, he continued his training there.

In 1942, Robbins left his training at the Children’s Hospital Medical Center to serve in the United States Army. During his service in the army, Robbins was assigned as a Chief of the Virus and Rickettsial Disease Section of the Fifteenth Medical General Laboratory. In this capacity, he served at various places including United States, North Africa and Italy. At the same time, he held the post of a supervisor of the diagnostic virus laboratory and simultaneously studied the immunology of mumps.

In 1946, Robbins was relieved off his military duties. Immediately thereafter, he resumed his training at the Children’s Hospital Medical Center, finally completing it in January 1948.

From 1948 to 1950, Robbins held a Senior Fellowship in Virus Diseases of the National Research Council. Simultaneously, he served as the member of the Faculty of the Harvard Medical School.

In 1948, Robbins collaborated with Dr John F. Enders in the Research Division of Infectious Diseases, The Children's Hospital Medical Center. At that time, there was no easy way for scientists to work with the viruses in the laboratory. They instead had to conduct research on eggs, mice, monkeys and other animals.

Robbins most significant contribution came at the end of the 1940s decade. He, along with John Franklin Enders and Thomas Weller, successfully, helped solve the problem of propagating viruses in laboratory suspensions of actively metabolizing cells in nutrient solutions. Robbins along with his team helped in growing polio and other viruses within the confines of the laboratory so as to develop their vaccines. Using the mixtures of human embryonic skin and muscle tissue suspended in cell cultures, they effectively demonstrating that the polio virus subsisted in extraneural tissue. The research work was revolutionary and the trio was conferred with Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of the ability of poliomyelitis viruses to grow in cultures of various types of tissue.