Robert M. Heyssel Collection

Biography

Robert M. Heyssel was born in Jamestown, Missouri. He received his B.S. in 1951 from the University of Missouri and his M.D. in 1953 from St. Louis University. In 1956, he joined the U.S. Public Health Service as a senior assistant surgeon and was stationed at the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, for two years. After returning to the United States, he did a fellowship in hematology at Washington University in St. Louis, then spent ten years at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Heyssel began his tenure at Johns Hopkins in 1968 as an associate dean of the school of medicine and as an administrator of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was named president and trustee of the hospital in 1983 and trustee of the university in 1986. Heyssel launched the Johns Hopkins Health System in 1986, and served as its president until his retirement in 1992. During his two decades of leadership, the Johns Hopkins Hospital underwent two major phases of physical redevelopment, including construction of the Oncology Center, the Nelson Patient Tower, the Harvey Teaching Tower, the Meyer Building for Psychiatry and Neurosciences, the Clayton Heart Center, the Maumenee Building of the Wilmer Eye Institute and the Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center, whose main building bears his name.

Scope and Content

The Robert M. Heyssel Collection spans his entire career at Johns Hopkins. It includes correspondence, lecture notes, curriculum vitae, interviews, speeches, newspaper articles, and Johns Hopkins Medical Institution press releases. Articles and speeches pertain to subjects such as hospital administration, the role of academic medical centers, and issues in health care reform. Additional material may be found in the records of the Office of the President of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the records of the Johns Hopkins Health System.

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