Robert Huebner - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Huebner was born in Cheviot, Ohio, a western suburb of Cincinnati, on February 23, 1914. After attending a local parish elementary school, he attended Elder High School, graduating in 1932. He attended Xavier College (later Xavier University, where he majored in economics and English literature and took the prerequisites to attend law school. He decided he wanted to become a physician and did his premed undergraduate training at the University of Cincinnati. He attended the Saint Louis University School of Medicine starting in 1938. He was threatened with expulsion from the school after officials there discovered that he had taken outside work to pay for his education in violation of school policy — including a job as a bouncer at a brothel — but stayed in school and graduated in 1942. He graduated in June 1942, ranked in the top five of his class of 100.

After graduating, he joined the United States Public Health Service during World War II, and was assigned for a year to the United States Marine Hospital in Seattle, and then to the United States Coast Guard ship USS Hemlock in Alaska. The Public Health Service transferred him to a position as a researcher at the National Institutes of Health in July 1944.