Joseph R. Robinson

Joseph R. Robinson (February 16, 1939 – September 4, 2006) was a pharmacy researcher and the Edward Kremers Emeritus Professor of Pharmacy in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Robinson began his professional education at the College of Pharmacy of Columbia University in New York City which led to B.S. (1961) and M.S. (1963) degrees in pharmacy. During that period the Columbia College of Pharmacy (since discontinued) possessed on its faculty several rigorously trained and enthusiastic scientists, some of whom had received their graduate education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. It was this influence that led to his taking his Ph.D. (in 1966) at the School of Pharmacy at Madison, where his major professor was Takeru Higuchi, informally though widely known as 'the father of physical pharmacy'.

After joining the UW School of Pharmacy faculty as an assistant professor in 1966, Robinson’s early research was in physical organic chemistry, but he soon shifted his attention to issues of biopharmaceutics, pharmacokinetics, and the general field of drug delivery. He was promoted to full professor in 1973.

His first sustained research program in the drug delivery area concerned the eye, and indeed this interest in ocular drug delivery continued throughout his career. (He held the concomitant position of Professor, then Professor Emeritus, in the Department of Ophthalmology, Medical School, UW–Madison). Later research work included contributions on oral, parenteral, buccal, and vaginal drug delivery systems and mechanisms, with a strong emphasis on bioadhesion as a control phenomenon.

Besides his contributions to the primary literature of these fields of research, he served on editorial boards of sixteen journals, he was the editor of two journals, and he edited a half dozen books on drug delivery, most influentially perhaps his 1978 volume “Sustained and Controlled Release Drug Delivery Systems”. He held over two dozen patents on delivery systems, and founded two companies in order to transform his ideas into practice. He also served on the boards of directors of numerous pharmaceutical companies.

Robinson guided forty Ph.D. candidates and many post-doctoral associates. He also carried a professional (that is, undergraduate) teaching load, and was popular with pharmacy students, who on numerous occasions voted him their favorite instructor. His courses in the professional program were in the pharmaceutics area, and included routes and mechanisms of drug administration, dosage form design, formulation issues, and extended even to manufacturing processes.

Robinson played an influential role in the self-governing process of the School of Pharmacy, and was particularly effective, in recent years, in leading the faculty concentration in the drug delivery area to a definite emphasis on biomaterials research. Yet despite his own interest in making practical application of drug delivery concepts, he never ceased to insist, at both the professional and graduate levels, a sound basis in the scientific foundations of pharmacy was the most effective form of pharmaceutical education.

Professor Robinson received many professional honors throughout his career, including the Ebert Prize of the American Pharmaceutical Association (APhA) in 1989, the Takeru Higuchi Research Prize (APhA, 1997), the Dale E. Wurster Award from the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists in 1996, the Honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of the Sciences (Philadelphia), 2003, Doctor Honoris Causa, Royal Danish School of Pharmacy, 1992, and the Nagai Award of the Japanese Pharmaceutical Association in 1990. He held the title Edward Kremers Emeritus Professor of Pharmacy in the School of Pharmacy, University of Wisconsin–Madison.