Frederick C. Robbins isolated and grew the poliovirus, which allowed Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin to develop the first successful polio vaccines. While a professor of pediatrics at the School of Medicine, Robbins shared the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with John F. Enders and Thomas H Weller; the three discovered that the poliovirus can grow in cultures of different types of tissue.
He served as dean of the School of Medicine from 1966 to 1980, and became dean emeritus and distinguished university professor emeritus in 1985.
Later, while president of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine, Robbins conducted a pilot study on Reye’s Syndrome that revealed the harmful effects of aspirin on children.
The Robbins Building, located in CWRU’s Health Sciences Campus is named in his honor.
