Robert Traub (1916 – 1996)

Robert Traub, ONE of the most accomplished and respected medical entomologists of this or any generation, died on 21 December 1996 at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, MD, after an extended illness. Although he is best known for his encyclopedic knowledge of fleas, his name stands for much more. He leaves a legacy of pioneering research accomplishments in several disciplines, especially flea systematics, chigger taxonomy, and the epidemiology of both scrub typhus and murine typhus. Because Dr. Traub was instrumental in founding the Journal of Medical Entomology in 1964 in which several of his substantial manuscripts were published, it is appropriate to present his obituary here and to dedicate this issue of the journal to him.