Education
University of Chicago. University of Rochester.
University of Chicago. University of Rochester.
Robscheit-Robbins was described in 1981, as a woman "of considerable presence" who was often seen wearing diamonds and with "elegantly coiffured" hair. In 2002, a Discover magazine article entitled "The 50 Most Important Women in Science" noted that the contributions of Robscheit-Robbins "deserve greater notice". Born in Germany, Robscheit-Robbins moved to the United States as a child.
She obtained her Bachelor of Science from the University of Chicago, her Mississippi from the University of California, and her Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Rochester.
Preliminary research was conducted in the early 1920s at the George William Hooper Foundation, University of California, where apricots were found to be valuable in treating induced anaemia in dogs. This result was so surprising to the researchers that it was not published.
However, work continued at the University of Rochester, New York from 1922, where the researchers compared the efficacy of different substances in treatment of anaemia. Robscheit-Robbins started working with Whipple in 1917, and was his research partner for 18 years.
She was the first-named author on Whipple"s single most important paper, and the first author is usually the one primarily responsible for the work on which the paper is based and in many fields of research the last author is the director of the laboratory or principal investigator responsible for the direction of the work.
Of the 23 papers that Whipple cited in his Nobel address, Robscheit-Robbins was co-author of ten of them.
