Biographical Memoirs Volume 60 (1991) / Chapter Skim
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16. William Jacob Robbins
16. William Jacob Robbins
Pages 292-329
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From page 293... ...
A man of prodigious energy, he often slept only a few hours a night and in 1949 compainec3 "that he was no longer capable of working more than fourteen to sixteen hours a clay without some cliversion."3 Since Robbins worked discreetly behinc! the scenes, his ~ A longer version of this essay appeared in the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 108( Jan.-March 198 1)
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From page 294... ...
For the next twenty-seven years Frederick Robbins served as high school principal, then Superintendent of Schools, in different Pennsylvania towns, keeping up all the while the skill he had developed in his youth as a cabinet maker. William remembered his father as a quiet but forceful man whom he revered for his scholarship and rectitucle.
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From page 295... ...
Robbins to accept the directorship of the New York Botanical Garden. Robbins's own education was unusual for a botanist in that he stuclie(l- in adclition to Greek, physics, and botany zoology, Latin, and mathematics during his four years at Lehigh University.
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From page 296... ...
Nothing in my opinion takes the place of the 'do it yourself approach."4 Christine Chapman Robbins and the Robbins Family On July 15, 1915, shortly after receiving his Ph.D. from Cornell, Robbins married Christine Faye (Chapman)
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From page 297... ...
William and Christine Robbins were true American intellectuals. Superb, careful, and critical workers, both were Phi Beta Kappa as undergraduates, and their common interests in plants, nature, and science continued to bind them—along with family matters, gardening, current affairs, fishing, cooking, and travel—for the rest of their lives.
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From page 298... ...
THE INTERIM YEARS: 1916-1919 In February 1916 the Robbins family moved to Alabama, where William had accepted a post as professor and chairman of the Botany Department and plant physiologist for the Agricultural Experiment Station. Arriving in Auburn with very little money, they rented a house for $25 a month.
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From page 299... ...
She stayer} six years working on the genetics of corn, and he gave her fine work the same due he gave to that of his male colleagues. When Robbins moved to the University in 1919, his administrative duties were limiter!
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From page 300... ...
books if not for social activities. During the four months before moving to New York, he was able to finish a substantial part of his pioneering work on the growth of excised roots and the vitamin requirements of fungi.
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From page 301... ...
As head of the Columbia department, Robert A Harper also held a seat on the Board of Managers of the New York Botanical Garden, and when the two men were at loggerheads, relations between the institutions coolect.
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From page 302... ...
He gave the study of South American flora (a long-term interest of taxonomists) a great boost by bringing in Bassett Maguire as its head.
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From page 303... ...
They were equally effective in dealing with Parks Department Commissioner Robert Moses, without whose support and permission no substantial changes could be made in the Garden's builclings and grounds. With the money they raised and ~ 80 WPA workers, Robbins was able to reconstruct the fifteen display houses of Range I, so cleteriorated from neglect they had to be replaced from the ground up.
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From page 304... ...
striking."5 Harding Research Laboratory When Robbins arrived at the Garden he fount! no laboratory for plant physiology.
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From page 305... ...
The six laboratories Robbins eventually had fitted out in the museum's east basement saw a good deal of first-class research in plant physiology, mycology, virology, and biochemistry related to plants. Then in the early 1950s, Robbins obtained substantial private funds to construct a separate research laboratory.
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From page 306... ...
whose principal investigators were supported by the National Institutes of Health for forty-two years.6 FAIRCHILD TROPICAL GARDEN, FLORIDA William I Robbins was one of the first persons Col.
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From page 307... ...
His later studies with tomato root tips showed that they synthesize both biotin and pyridoxin in the presence of thiamin. He was particularly interested in vitamin relationships to plants at this period and began to study these and other growth factors in relation to the lower plants such as Euglena and many fungi, particularly those of dermatological interest and the wood rotting basidiomycetes.
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From page 308... ...
In 19 ~ 7 Robbins suggested that Loeb's hormone might be sugar because the root lacked chlorophyll and was unable to synthesize its own carbohydrates. To test this hypothesis he compared the growth of excised root tips from ~ Vernon Stoutemeyer, personal communication, 1980.
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From page 309... ...
to the medium. He macle this additon knowing the extract to contain vitamine which increased growth in animals, bacteria, and yeasty and found that medium containing yeast extract was capable of supporting unlimitect growth of tomato roots.
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From page 310... ...
substitute for yeast extract in permitting unlimited growth of excised tomato roots. Thiamine hac!
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From page 311... ...
Robbins's mycological and chemical studies done colIaboratively with Frederick Kavanagh, Marjorie Anchel, Alma Barksclale, Trevor McMorris, M
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Neal Weber (who hac! received an NRC Fellowship in 1934 when Robbins was chairman of its National Fellowship Board in the Biological Sciences)
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From page 313... ...
at his age, he decided, he had nothing to lose. For many years Robbins had been fascinated by the sharp physiological anti morphological (differences separating the juvenile and adult stages of Hedera helix, and the fact that gibberellic acid applied to adult Hedera caused reversion to the juvenile form.
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From page 314... ...
water stored in "inert" polyethylene bottles (1974~. They had used excised roots of Bryophyllum calycium (sensitive to material leached from the plastic)
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From page 315... ...
During his two years abroad] from 1928 to 1930, Robbins visited botanists in every country of Europe except Greece, Spain, and Portugal, evaluating research projects proposed for Rockefeller Foundation grants and interviewing scientists—including one Polish couple, studying coprophilous fungi, with whom his only common language was Latin!
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From page 316... ...
in the Biological Sciences, a National Research Council committee that grantee! NRC postdoctoral fellowships supported by Rockefeller Foundation grants.
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From page 317... ...
His proposal to allocate at least twenty-five percent of the funds to lesser known schools was clefeatect, with serious consequences for research in universities as is now becoming evident. Writing in 1935, he summarized his strong views regarding research as a crucial part of scientific training: "I conceive research as an attempt to answer questions or to solve problems by a method which involves three steps: first, the definition, analysis and comprehension of the problem; second, a search for the solutions or answers; third, the testing of the solutions by reasoning, by experimentation if possible, and by checking the proposed solutions against the knowledge we now have.
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From page 318... ...
the sport throughout his life. During the 1930s the Robbins family spent their summers in the Rocky Mountains, Michigan, and Canada, backpacking in to find good trout streams and lakes.
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From page 319... ...
On January I, 1958, after a heart specialist had diagnosed cardiac insufficiency, he resigned as director of the New York Botanical Garden, put his affairs in order, and prepared to die at any time.
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From page 320... ...
HONORS AND DISTINCTIONS In 1941 Dr. Robbins was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society, the oIclest and one of the most distinguished learned societies in America, started by Benjamin Franklin in 1743.
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From page 321... ...
He also had no administrative assistant in the early days and couicl not (lo everything requested of him. Staff members trying to obtain funds for their own activities resented his apparent unresponsiveness, though they often benefited by becoming more self-reliant as funcI-raisers.
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From page 322... ...
he took the job at the New York Botanical Garden in the expectation of having more time in the laboratory. In reality, he had no more time for research there than he had had at Missouri.
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From page 323... ...
. is what has brought us from the darkness and barrenness of the scholasticism of the micicIle ages."2i Alone of all the presidential portraits at the American Philosophical Society, Robbins's shows him in a laboratory coat.
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From page 324... ...
Those from his years at the University of Missouri are in the American Philosophical Society and National Academy of Sciences archives. We were unable to locate reports made to the Rockefeller Foundation for 1928 to 1930.
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From page 325... ...
1941 NAS Finance Committee 1940 Member, National Academy of Sciences 1931-1937 Chairman, NRC Fellowship Board in the Biological Sciences 23 We are indebted to Janice Goldblum of the National Academy Archives for this list, which she included in a letter to David R Goddard on February 15, 1979.
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From page 326... ...
Vitamin Be and the growth of excised tomato roots. Science 85 :246-47.
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From page 327... ...
9:177-86. 1957 The influence of Jacques Loeb on the development of plant tissue culture.
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From page 328... ...
Auxin, cytokinin, and growth of excised roots of Bryophyllum calycinum.
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