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Robert Martin Wohlhueter

Robert Martin Wohlhueter '62

Dec. 13, 1940-Jul. 13, 2020

Robert Martin Wohlhueter ’62 died on July 13, 2020, in Minneapolis. Born on Dec. 13, 1940, in the farming community of Colden, N.Y., he came to Hamilton from Springville-Griffith Institute High School. At Hamilton he majored in chemistry and was a member of the Emerson Literary Society. 

Outside of the classroom, one of his more notable achievements sparked a somewhat heavenly debate. He and a group of otherwise unidentified residents of South unfurled a “ban-the-bomb” pennant on the weather vane atop the Chapel’s steeple. As the story goes, among those who first noticed this intrusion were Jack Letzelter, then head of physical plant for the College, and Hamilton’s chaplain, the Reverend Colin Finnie Miller. Reportedly, Letzelter expressed the opinion that the sign was the work of “Communists from Utica.” The chaplain allegedly responded in his rich, Scottish brogue: “Perhaps it came down from above.” Now, we know better.

For his postgraduate studies, Bob attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he completed his doctoral studies in biochemistry. While in Madison, he married Judith Potter, whom he had known since childhood. Thereafter, the Wohlhueters relocated to the Universitat Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany, where he was a postdoctoral fellow and where their son, Alexander, was born.

In 1975, Bob was appointed assistant professor of microbiology at the University of Minnesota. During the 1980s, he helped to establish the school’s Institute of Human Genetics and brought cutting-edge technology to the attention of other university scientists. He also began studying Chinese, which would prove its value much later in life. 

In 1990, he left Minnesota for Atlanta after accepting a position at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His focus was on virology and genetics. He also took advantage of the city, enjoying its diversity, food, and long history. He retired from the CDC in 2006, but not from research or teaching. 

In what others might term his “retirement,” Bob accepted a position at Georgia State University teaching biochemistry; he later taught the subject as a visiting professor for four semesters at four different Chinese universities. In his 50th reunion yearbook, he said he took up “the challenge of bringing English scientific lingo to the industrious students of China to abet their drive to ascendancy in world science.” As recently as 2016, he was assisting student scientists as a co-author of their publications. On his own, he published more than 60 peer-reviewed papers in The Journal of Biological Chemistry and The Journal of Cellular Physiology, among other scientific publications.

Bob’s political activism endured after the Hill. In Minneapolis, he co-founded the Unity Theater, where he produced and performed in works ranging from street theatre to plays by Bertolt Brecht to a musical by Marc Blitzstein. He was a founding member of the Committee Against Racism in Minneapolis and was an officer in the Democratic Socialists of America in Atlanta.

A voracious reader, Bob devoured books about history, etymology, world cinema, music, and theatre. He also went canoeing in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters and paddled down the Colorado River, the Cuyabeno in Ecuador, and the Zambezi in southern Africa. 

In 2019, he and Judy returned from Atlanta to Minneapolis, where he joined German and Chinese language groups, attended plays, visited museums, rode his bicycle, and went to baseball games with Alexander and his family.

For Bob, Hamilton was where, as he wrote in his 50th reunion yearbook, “the working draft of my enduring, scientific world-view was scribbled out in the science classrooms. … But it was fleshed out by the profound humanitarian insights of the likes of Otto Liedke and Earl Count. And sardonically nitpicked by my not-always-profound ELS confrères.”

Robert M. Wohlhueter is survived by his wife, son, and two grandsons.

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