Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Shank, Robert E.
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
- Shank, Robert
- Dr. Robert Shank
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1914-2000
History
Robert E. Shank (1914-2000) was a graduate of Washington University School of Medicine, Class of 1939, and a resident at Barnes Hospital (1939-1940) and at St. Louis Isolation Hospital (1941). In late 1941 he became an assistant in research and resident physician at the hospital of the Rockefeller Institute in New York. While retaining these positions, Shank entered the U.S. Navy in 1942 and was assigned to the hospital's Naval Research Unit. Returning to civilian life in 1946, he became an associate of the New York Public Health Research Institute. In 1948 Shank was called to his alma mater in 1948 to become Danforth Professor of Medicine and head of the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health.
As head of Preventive Medicine, Shank brought a new research emphasis to his department, that being nutrition studies. He contributed to many projects in this specialty of national and international importance. He was particularly associated with the formation of standards for minimum dietary allowances by the National Research Council Food and Nutrition Board. He served as a consultant to the U.S. Public Health Service, the Interdepartmental Committee on Nutrition for National Defense, the Pan American Health Organization, and several food industry associations. Under his leadership, the scope of the department broadened to include work in rehabilitation, health maintenance organizations, biostatistics, applied physiology, and lipid research.
Shank became professor emeritus in 1981. He proved to be the last regular head of the department: after five years under interim leadership, Preventive Medicine and Public Health was discontinued in January 1987 and its faculty and programs assigned to other departments, notably Internal Medicine.
Places
Legal status
Functions, occupations and activities
Mandates/sources of authority
Internal structures/genealogy
General context
Relationships area
Related entity
Identifier of related entity
Category of relationship
Type of relationship
Dates of relationship
Description of relationship
Access points area
Subject access points
Place access points
Occupations
Control area
Authority record identifier
Institution identifier
Rules and/or conventions used
RDA
ISAAR
Status
Revised
Level of detail
Minimal
Dates of creation, revision and deletion
Entered into the Bernard Becker Medical Library Archives December 16, 2019 1:38 PM
Revised March 30, 2020
Language(s)
- English
Script(s)
- Latin
Sources
local
- Ordered into Aeon: Robert E. Shank correspondence. RG028-S02-ss08-B16-F06 Folder 1977, Part of Occupational Therapy Program Records
- Ordered into Aeon: General correspondence, 1947-1975. FC034-S15. Part of Robert E. Shank Papers
- Ordered into Aeon: Shank, Robert E., Vertical File