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Robert J. Glaser, MD
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Robert J. Glaser, MD Robert J. Glaser, MD began his academic career at Washington University School of Medicine and ultimately served for many years as a Trustee, Chairman of the Medical National Council, and now an Emeritus Trustee. After attending Harvard College, where he received his undergraduate degree in 1940, he went to Harvard Medical School, receiving his M.D. magna cum laude in 1943. Although he was planning to intern at a Harvard teaching hospital, he was invited to take his internship at Barnes Hospital by Dr. W. Barry Wood, Jr., recently recruited from Johns Hopkins as head of the Department of Medicine at Washington University. After completing the internship year, Dr. Glaser returned to Boston as an assistant resident at Harvard’s Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, but, impressed with the Barnes-Washington University program, he accepted Dr. Wood’s invitation to return to the School of Medicine as senior assistant resident and later chief resident on the medical service. After two years as a National Research Council Fellow, during which he began his long-term studies on Group A streptococcal infections and their relation to rheumatic fever, Dr. Glaser joined the School of Medicine faculty in 1949 as an instructor of medicine. Over the next few years, he held the titles of associate professor of medicine, chief of the Division of Immunology and of the Rheumatic Fever Clinic, and associate dean and chairman of the Committee on Admissions. In 1957, Dr. Glaser, age 38, was recruited as dean of the University of Colorado Medical School. He also served as vice president for medical affairs. During his tenure in Colorado, he was named editor of The Pharos, the quarterly journal of Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society, a post he held for 35 years. In 1963, Dr. Glaser went to Harvard to head a program designed to bring together six of the university’s teaching hospitals. He simultaneously held a chair in social medicine and taught in the Department of Medicine. Two years later, Dr. Glaser went to Stanford University to assume the position of vice-president for medical affairs, dean of the medical school and professor of medicine. He consolidated a divided hospital and played an important role in establishing the Stanford University Medical Center. In 1968, he served briefly as Stanford’s acting president. While at Stanford, he became recognized as a national leader in medical education and medical care. During this period, he also was a founding member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the first chair of the Association of American Medical Colleges. Leaving full-time academia, Dr. Glaser moved to New York in 1970 to serve as vice-president of the Commonwealth fund. Two years later, he returned to California to head the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. From 1984 to 1997, Dr. Glaser served as director of medical science and as a member of the board of trustees of the Lucille P. Markey Charitable Trust, which provided basic biomedical research grants totaling $500 million until its scheduled closing in 1997. He work as a policy setter at the Kaiser Family Foundation and at the Market Trust and as a director of other organizations had a profound impact on Washington University and helped transform medical education and biomedical research. Some of the programs he championed at Washington University, such as the Markey Scholars program, have helped speed the development of some of the finest young biomedical investigators in the nation. Dr. Glaser, now a biomedical consultant, serves as chair of the School of Medicine’s National Council, a 24-member committee that helps chart the School of Medicine’s direction. Glaser was elected to Washington University’s Board of Trustees in 1979, and he continues to serve on the board’s educational policy committee, which he chaired for more than a decade. Among his numerous honors and awards are ten honorary degrees (including those from Washington University, John Hopkins University, the University of Colorado, and the Watson School of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), the Abraham Flexner Award for Distinguished Service to Medical Education from the Association of American Medical Colleges, the Hubert H. Humphrey Cancer Research Center Award, and the Harvard Club of San Francisco Distinguished Citizen Award for Outstanding Leadership of Medical Education and Research. In 1986, the Robert J. Glaser Award was established by the Society for Research and Education in Primary Care Internal Medicine in recognition of Dr. Glaser’s leadership in revitalizing general internal medicine. In 1998, he received the William Greenleaf Eliot Society Award, the university’s most prestigious honor. In addition, he is a member of the American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Master of the American College of Physicians and the Royal College of Physicians of London. He has published more than 135 articles on medical education, health care, rheumatic fever and streptococcal infections.
Division of Infectious Diseases
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