Robert L. Brent MD, PhD, DSc

Robert L. Brent is the Distinguished Professor, Louis and Bess Stein Professor of Pediatrics, Radiology and Pathology at the Jefferson Medical College, Director of the Clinical and Environmental Teratology Laboratories at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Delaware. Robert Brent was born in Rochester, New York in 1927, received his AB, MD with honor, a PhD in radiation biology and embryology and Honorary DSc degrees from the University of Rochester and the Jefferson Medical College.He worked in the cosmic ray research laboratories of the physics department and as a research associate in the genetics and embryology divisions of the Manhattan Project of the University of Rochester, where he began his studies on the teratogenic effects of ionizing radiation. As a graduate student he was appointed the Head of the embryology section of the medical school’s atomic energy facility. He was the first research and clinical fellow of the March of Dimes involved in congenital malformations research. He spent his army tour at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research as Chief of Radiation Biology.

He came to Jefferson and has received every award that Jefferson can offer a faculty member, and for having received continuous federal research funding as a principal investigator for his entire research career. In 1989, he was named the third Distinguished Professor in Jefferson’s 188 year history.

He was elected to NCRP in 1973. In 2006 he delivered the L.S. Taylor Lecture, having already received the highest honor of the Teratology Society and the Health Physics Society. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1996. He was the editor of “Teratology” for 17 years, and has been invited to China five times and to Japan seven times as a Visiting Lecturer and has had invited lectureships in 27 countries. In 1994 he was selected by the Chinese government as the President of the first International Congress on Birth Defects in China. Dr. Brent will receive the John Scott Award of the American Philosophical Society on November 22, 2013 for his research pertaining to the environmental causes of birth defects but especially for his early research that indicated that the embryo was less vulnerable to the carcinogenic effect of ionizing radiation than the child or adult.