Robert Merritt Chanock

Abstract

Paediatrician and virologist who identified human respiratory syncytial virus in human beings. Born on July 8, 1924, in Chicago, IL, USA, he died on July 30, 2010, in Sykesville, MD, USA, aged 86 years. Robert Chanock was not a man who did things by half measures. A towering figure in the world of infectious diseases, his colleagues recall the determination and vigour he applied to his work. “He was a very devoted and disciplined virologist with a broad knowledge and considerable energy”, says Professor Erling Norrby of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. His most famous contribution was the identification, in 1957, of human respiratory syncytial virus. In the same period, the team he led also discovered the four parainfluenza viruses. “It was an extraordinarily heady time of virus discovery”, said Kenneth McIntosh, who joined Chanock's laboratory in 1965 and is now Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. Chanock was born in Chicago, where his father owned a lamp factory that he later converted to produce artillery shells. At high school, he contemplated studying physics but when he was drafted into the army, in 1943, he was given a choice between going to the European front or medical school with military support. His choice led him to the University of Chicago, where he eventually trained in paediatrics under the inspirational figure of Howell Wright. It was Wright who steered Chanock in the direction of Albert Sabin, the famed polio vaccine developer in whose laboratory he began working in the early 1950s. Chanock later recalled that Wright told him Sabin would “bring order and discipline into his life”. The older researcher certainly influenced Chanock's career, encouraging him in 1954 to strike out on his own in the field of respiratory tract infections. That year, Chanock moved from Sabin's laboratory to the University of Cincinnati. 2 years later, he went to Johns Hopkins University. Then came the move that would define his career when he was offered a job by Robert Huebner, Chief of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases (LID) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Chanock would spend the next 50 years at the institute, eventually becoming chief of LID in 1968. Albert Kapikian, Chief of the Epidemiology Section at LID says Chanock's contributions “were true to the traditional goals of LID which emphasized finding the cause of medically important infectious diseases, defining their epidemiology, and developing methods for prevention. He possessed the unique ability to carry out each of these phases with great skill.” The current director of NIAID, Anthony S Fauci, says “Bob truly was a legend whose work has had a profound influence on so many in the scientific community, including me. When I first was learning about infectious diseases, in medical school and residency, Bob's papers and chapters popped up everywhere. The name ‘Chanock’ seemed synonymous with disease discovery.” In addition to pursuing the discovery of new viruses, Chanock also put his energies into developing vaccines and treatments for viral diseases. His teams developed a vaccine that the Food and Drug Administration licensed to prevent two types of adenovirus infection, and played a part in developing vaccines against hepatitis A and rotavirus, the most common cause of severe diarrhoea among infants. Their efforts to develop vaccines for respiratory syncytial virus and parainfluenza viruses were, however, unsuccessful. Chanock was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 1973. He was awarded the Robert Koch Prize, the Albert B Sabin Gold Medal, and the E Mead Johnson Award. Norrby ranks him among the 20 most important virologists of all time, “to illustrate his large influence on the history of virology”. The energy that he applied to research also spilled over into his personal life. He kept fit by swimming a mile almost every day and was enthusiastic about listening to and recording classical music. “He had at his house two latest-model reel-to-reel tape recorders, and every time there was a broadcast chamber music concert, he would set up both tape recorders (in case one of them broke down during the concert) and record it”, McIntosh recalls. “It was an incredible collection. And having his memory, he knew exactly what was there—every single tape, down to the individual performance of the individual work.” Chanock is survived by his son, Stephen, and four grandchildren. His wife Catherine, died last year and another son, Foster, died in 1980.