Dr. Samuel Robinson was born in 1877 in Augusta, Maine. He graduated from Harvard University in 1898 and Harvard Medical School in 1902. After an internship at the Massachusetts General Hospital, he entered practice, first in Boston and then in Clifton Springs, New York. His interest in thoracic surgery prompted him to abandon practice in 1913 in order to work with Sauerbruch in Europe. There, Robinson did considerable experimental work on pulmonary resections, anesthesia, and other problems. Upon his return to the United States he, with Dr. Will Mayo, established a Thoracic Surgical Section at the Mayo Clinic and became its Director until 1917. When theUnited States entered the war, Robinson was commissioned a Major and assigned to Letterman General Hospital in San Francisco as Chief of the Surgical Section. After the war, he resumed practice in Santa Barbara.

Beginning with his studies in Germany, Dr. Robinson devoted his time increasingly to the field of thoracic surgery. Most of his forty-five articles on the subject deal with the then basic problems. He investigated methods of artificial respiration and their relation to control of acute surgically induced pneumothorax. He successfully utilized these methods in the administration of anesthetic agents. With success in this area, he widened his field to include the heart and lungs. He explored methods of lung resection and foresaw their use in bronchiectasis and other diseases. He was among the first to strongly advocate definitive surgery for heart injuries including pericardial drainage and suture of the heart and lung. As with many other surgeons of this time, empyema was a subject of consuming importance to him. His trephine of the rib to control intra-thoracic pressure was ingenious.

Dr. Robinson was a member of numerous professional organizations to which he made important contributions. His enthusiastic support of the AATS in its early days justified his selection as a Founder and his election to the Presidency in 1922.

Dr. Robinson died in Santa Barbara in 1947.

Dr. Samuel Robinson