Robert J. Huebner
National Institutes of Health
February 23, 1914 - August 26, 1998
|
Scientific Discipline: Microbial Biology Membership Type:
Emeritus
(elected 1960)
|
Robert J. Huebner helped isolate and describe over 400 viruses and infectious bacteria during his forty years of epidemiological research. His studies contributed to the control and understanding of Q-fever, epidemic pleurodynia (Bornholm disease), herpangina, and cancer. Huebner was also the first virologist to identify the causative agent of rickettsial pox. He conducted the first study of prevalence of coxsackie virus within a community and classified several previously unknown types of the virus. He discovered the source of pharyngoconjunctivial fever in children was from a type 3 adenovirus, which he later developed a vaccine for. One of Huebner’s most notable contributions was his exploration of cancer-inducing viruses in animals that led to the discovery of genes with the potential to cause cancer called oncogenes. This important finding laid the foundation for DNA solid-tumor virus research.
After attending Xavier University and the University of Cincinnati from 1932 to 1938, Huebner went to the St. Louis University School of Medicine and received his MD in 1942. During World War II, he served as a medical officer for the U.S. Coast Guard in Alaska. From 1944 to 1949, he was a commissioned officer for the U.S. Public Health Service’s (USPHS) Laboratory of Infectious Diseases at the National Microbiological Institute. He continued working at the lab as the chief of the Section of Virus and Rickettsial Diseases. Huebner left in 1956 to become the chief of the Laboratory of Viral Diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In 1968, he was appointed the chief of the Laboratory of RNA Tumor Viruses at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). He held the position until 1977 when he became an expert for the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Biology at NCI, and he kept working there until his retirement in 1982. Huebner was a member of the American Epidemiological Society, the International Union Against Cancer, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, and among others, the American Academy of Microbiology. He received numerous awards for his viral research, the most eminent of which were Pasteur Medal of the Pasteur Institute in 1965, the Distinguished Service Medal of the USPHS in 1966, the National Medal of Science in 1969, the Kimble Methodology Research Award in 1970, and the Rockefeller Public Service Award the same year.
