Robert Austrian, 90; pioneer in devising pneumonia vaccine

Dr. Robert Austrian, an internationally known expert in the prevention of pneumococcal diseases whose research led to the development of the pneumonia vaccine that has saved countless lives worldwide, died March 25 of a stroke at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He was 90.

“Bob was a pioneer in understanding pneumococcal diseases,” said Dr. Richard S. Ross, a longtime friend and dean emeritus of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “He was very studious, competent and a model of the academic research physician.”

After conducting successful clinical trials among gold miners in South Africa, Austrian reported in 1976 that his vaccine was safe and effective. His 14-pneumonia vaccine was licensed the next year.

However, some in the medical community were skeptical about the efficacy of the vaccine in the United States, and it wasn’t until the results of a control study were published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1991 that the vaccine won wide acceptance.

“The recent emergence of widespread resistance of the pneumococcus to penicillin and many other commonly used antibiotics highlights the incredible importance of the vaccine to the practice of medicine,” according to a statement issued by the University of Pennsylvania. “What Dr. Austrian did to solve a major human disease problem, often totally by himself, is extremely rare in modern medicine.”

Austrian was born in Baltimore. His father, Dr. Charles R. Austrian, who specialized in chest diseases and was physician in chief at Sinai Hospital for many years, was a highly regarded internist and professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins.

The younger Austrian earned a bachelor’s degree at Johns Hopkins in 1937 and received his medical degree from Johns Hopkins medical school in 1941. While he was an intern and resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital, he became interested in pneumonia.

He was director of Johns Hopkins Hospital’s outpatient department when he left in 1952 to become associate professor of medicine at the State University of New York College of Medicine.

Since 1962, he had been a member of the medical faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a professor of research medicine and had been chairman of the department.

Even though he retired in 1986, Austrian continued to maintain a busy schedule, working part-time six days a week in his laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania hospital.

He continued studying pneumococcal isolates that were sent to him from colleagues around the world while analyzing the strain types to track the epidemiology of infection. By determining the various pneumococcal types, he was able to include them in future generations of the vaccine.

Austrian’s work garnered him many awards, including the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research in 1978 and election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1979.

He is survived by a sister and two stepdaughters.