Robert J. Rubin passed away on December 9, 2016. He joined the Society of Toxicology (SOT) in 1975 and was a member of the Comparative and Veterinary, Mechanisms, Reproductive and Developmental Toxicology, and Risk Assessment Specialty Sections. An SOT Endowment Fund, the Robert J. Rubin Student Travel Fund, was created by an initial generous gift from one of his former students, Mark Montgomery. Another of Dr. Rubin’s students, Robert Roth, with the help of Mark Reasor as well, prepared an overview of the life and research of their mentor. Below is my personal tribute.
Not too often, but thankfully at times when it is most needed, a person has an impact that reaches far beyond the moment. Graduate education is like that and Robert J. (Bob) Rubin is a prime example of that kind of mentor. Namely, he rescued me from the discard pile of academic applicants. I need to explain that statement. I credit him as more than my mentor and my continuing guide in my future academic and business life. And he played this role with more than just me; others are likely to come forward with similar experiences that relate their own interactions with him. But, now, let me tell you why Bob had his impact on me and likely others as part of this personal memorial note.
In 1966, and without realizing it, I had applied for graduate school at the Johns Hopkins University, sending my application to the Department of Biochemistry. That turned out to be in the School of Hygiene and Public Health. Here I was, a newly minted “scientist” who grew up with Mr. Wizard and the mantra, “Better living through Chemistry.” I was seeking a combination of biology and chemistry but did not realize that where my application landed was not the Department of Physiological Chemistry under Al Lehninger in the School of Medicine.
Roger Herriot, a microbiologist and noted virologist, then the chair of the Biochemistry Department in the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, to which I had unknowingly applied, saw the application from a Biology Department graduate having a minor in Chemistry from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Instead of rejection and the waste bin, I was recycled and redirected to a new program in the Department of Environmental Medicine, a program that was starting under the guidance of the industrial hygienist and indomitable Professor Anna Baetjer and a new faculty member, then a young pharmacologist from Kansas by way of New Haven, Robert J. Rubin. Both now were responsible for the creation of a training program that merged biology and chemistry under the heading of Toxicology in the eclectic sphere called Environmental Medicine. The latter department was staffed with pulmonologists such as Richard L. Riley, Sol Permutt, Baruch Bromberger, and Donald Proctor. However, the same department was doing world class research in muscle physiology (John Fales), neurophysiology (Zoltan Annau), and industrial hygiene and space medicine (Anna Baetjer). Bob was the new faculty member who was adding pharmacology and nucleotide metabolism to that list of competences.
Bob Rubin took me on, this newly minted baccalaureate scientist, from New Jersey via Troy, New York, with interests in Biology and Chemistry; he guided me to a field that was just beginning to be recognized, a field called Toxicology. Bob showed me chemistry with all the added wonders of nature, enzymes, and biotransformation. As part of my training and during my first year, Bob asked us to define the field of Environmental Medicine and how it included the study of Toxicology. I offered him this definition, one that he chose to repeat and credit to me, namely that Environmental Medicine is like a rubber bucket; you stick anything into it and the container molds itself and allows the contents to fit like they belonged together.
And soon Environmental Medicine, and within it, the science of Toxicology would be seen as the study of environmental contamination, namely getting sick or even dying from chemicals. The Environment is contaminated, we were being told: by DDT, by Kepone, by wastes dumped at Love Canal, by PBCs and Dioxins, by lead in air and water, by chromium and arsenic in water, by vinyl chloride in hair spray, and more. The 60s and soon the 70s became a time that was soon to be defined by works such as Silent Spring (Rachel Carson), by research on aerosol-gas interactions (Mary Amdur), the study of Occupational Medicine and Physiology (James L. Whittenberger), and chemicals and cancer (Norton Nelson) among others. In fact, Jim and Norton led the review committee that awarded Bob and Anna their continuing years of a training grant to create a new generation of toxicologists, yours truly among them, with thanks to Bob.
Bob introduced me and my fellow students to his mentors from the field of Pharmacology at Yale and through him, we were pleased to meet and learn about Sheldon Murphy (organophosphates), Mary Amdur (aerosols), Maryellen Avery (surfactant and the lung) plus others like Joe Brain and Jere Mead at the Harvard School of Public Health where I went after Bob was done with me as a trainee. From Bob, I learned that he had obtained his Master’s degree from Isaac Asimov at Boston University. Asimov was a biochemist and science fiction writer of no small mien. Bob’s interaction with Asimov was tumultuous he often told me but that is a story that is not mine to tell and is lost with him. You should ask Steve Cohen how he knew Bob Rubin from the time that he was growing up in Boston. It is a small world after all, even in Toxicology.
From Bob, I soon learned that Chemistry was a natural adjunct to Pharmacology when, with his help and insistence, that I practice my skills in analytical chemistry. He noted that I was trained partly as a chemist. Thus, I showed that “drug” metabolism in the isolated perfused liver includes the biotransformation of a plasticizer or the vacuum pump oil, Di-2-ethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP), leached from PVC tubing into metabolites that looked like nucleotides on an ion exchange column. Bob was then studying the toxicity of Orotic acid and how it produced a fatty liver.
With that demonstration, a one year adventure into chemistry and an analytical tour de force, aided by Drs. Catherine Fenslau and Cecil Robinson in the Medical School Department of Physiological Chemistry (remember, I applied there), Bob told me sadly that I had to start over with a new research project. Since DEHP was known to be nontoxic and had no then known adverse effects, no toxicology PhD thesis would come from the study of a non-toxic substance. But that is another story for another day, namely, how a non-toxic chemical could become “toxic” and how this particular graduate student was able to convince a skeptic that it, DEHP, was a worthy subject for a doctoral dissertation.
This personal memorial note is about my mentor and guide, Bob Rubin, the person who started me as well as several others on a journey of discovery in then, the new field of Biochemical Toxicology. It would be my personal wish that the next generations of Toxicologists should all be so blessed and well guided.