A New Biography Tells the Story of Visionary Penn Vet Dean Robert Marshak

In a career that spanned decades, Dean Emeritus Robert R. Marshak transformed the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine and left a lasting impact on the quality of animal health care worldwide. Now this visionary leader’s story is being told by some of the people who knew him best.

The Book of Bob: The Story of Robert Marshak is a tribute to Marshak’s life and legacy. The biography is the combined effort of 16 contributors. They include fellow Dean Emeritus Alan Kelly, who passed away before the book was published, and other “Bob’s Friends,” including Dean Emeritus Joan C. Hendricks and Penn Vet faculty members past and present. Relatives and friends have provided moving remembrances of a caring, open-hearted man who lived to age 97. Marshak died in 2020.

In The Book of Bob, Marshak’s colleagues tell the story of a multi-faceted man – a bovine practitioner raised in the Bronx, the child of immigrants, who fell in love with his future profession at the tender age of nine, watching a veterinarian tend to a dairy cow during a family vacation in the Catskills.  He would go on to revolutionize the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine and help it become a world-class institution. In this telling, we learned Marshak saw that potential from the start. He left his private dairy practice in Vermont to join the School’s faculty in 1956, even though it meant a sizable cut in income. The Book of Bob tells it in Marshak’s own words:

There was a chance at Penn—I could almost taste it— to move veterinary education, especially clinical education, out of its traditionally vocational mode and to catch up with our colleagues in human medicine. It seemed a cause worthy of any sacrifice, and I remember thinking that if the medicine position were offered, I would seize it regardless of salary.

At the time, the veterinary profession did not have the same standing as its human medical counterpart. Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine, meanwhile, was much in need of capital improvements and economic investment. Marshak was determined to surmount all those obstacles.

A visionary who elevated the School and the profession

Although he had no previous academic experience, Marshak quickly proved himself an inspiring educator. He also made leadership responsibilities one of the conditions of his hire, according to The Book of Bob. First as chairman of the Department of Medicine and later as head of the Department of Clinical Studies, he put his vision into practice, recruiting future clinician-scientists who went on to establish national and international reputations. He reconfigured work schedules so hospital clinicians had time for research and defined clinical veterinary specialties in response to the evolving need for advanced levels of competency.

Gustavo D. Aguirre, Penn Vet professor of medical genetics and ophthalmology, was one of Marshak’s clinician-scientists.

“Bob Marshak was a breath of fresh air for our School,” said Aguirre, one of The Book of Bob’s contributors. “In the process, he also saw that the profession was backwards and still married to the ‘tried and (not so) true’ treatments that lacked adequate proof of efficacy. Basically, he was a strong believer in evidence-based veterinary medicine.”

Both as the head of departments and when he took the School’s helm as dean from 1973 to 1987, Marshak more than earned his moniker as the Father of Veterinary Clinical Specialties, influencing and helping expand the quality of care not just at Penn but throughout the profession. While dean, he led the School through a period of great innovation and investment.  He oversaw the construction of its small animal hospital, enhancements and additions to Widener Hospital at the New Bolton Center, and the construction of the C. Mahlon Kline Center for Orthopedics and Rehabilitation. A dedicated advocate for the School, he convinced others in the private and public sectors to lend their support. That enabled breakthroughs in cancer research, reproductive physiology, and pathobiology. Marshak was a researcher in his own right, publishing scientific papers on topics such as bovine leukemia, metabolic diseases, and leptospirosis.

A beloved leader and colleague

But Marshak was held in esteem not only for his leadership and accomplishments. This cigar-smoking, opera-loving New Yorker who never lost his soft spot for cows was also a very good friend to many people.

Said close colleague and later memorialist Kelly at the time of Marshak’s death, “He is fondly remembered for his dazzling accomplishment, but also for his compassion, and boundless generosity. We all loved him.”

Now, with The Book of Bob, those who studied and worked with Marshak will have a lasting memorial to the man who helped make Penn Vet what it has become, and those who came after him can read and learn.

In his foreword to the new biography, Dean Andrew Hoffman was speaking for himself, but he also was voicing the sentiments of many in the Penn Vet community when he wrote:

“Indeed, Bob’s legacy is indelible and unforgettable; a model and an inspiration to me, yet a story worth telling over and over, which is why The Book of Bob is so significant.”

The Book of Bob is expected to be published by the end of summer, with a book launch planned for the fall. To be notified when the book becomes available, and to reserve your copy, please complete this interest form.