Evan L. Stubbs
Martin M. Kaplan
After graduating from Penn Vet in 1911, Dr. Evan L. Stubbs started his professional veterinary career operating a country practice from his father’s farm in Oxford, PA. In 1913, he joined the Experimental Farm which had been started by Dr. Leonard Pearson in 1896 and was operated by the Pennsylvania Bureau of Animal Industry. The Farm worked to prevent and monitor outbreaks – for example, producing a free hog cholera vaccine serum for veterinarians. Dr. Stubbs was a veterinarian on call to visit the site of outbreaks and offer diagnostic assistance.
When the Experimental Farm closed in 1919, Dr. Stubbs joined the State Laboratory – also started by Dean Pearson and located at the Vet School – where he continued to work on the diseases that affected livestock animals. He conducted research on poultry diseases and was one of the first researchers to identify an outbreak of avian influenza in the United States in 1924-1925. In 1927, Dr. Stubbs joined the faculty of the School of Veterinary Medicine and was promoted to professor of pathology in 1930, becoming chair of the newly formed pathology department. Dr. Stubbs was a leader and pioneer in research, publishing over 160 scientific papers during his career, and inspiring his coworkers and colleagues in the School of Veterinary Medicine to share their work.
Dr. Martin M. Kaplan, V’40, was a virologist, international public health officer, and humanitarian. He received a master’s in public health from Penn’s Graduate School of Medicine in 1942 where he was the only veterinarian in his class. Dr. Kaplan played an integral role in leading an international effort to restore livestock numbers in Europe after World War II. He was an authority on the transmission of certain diseases from animals to humans, including rabies and influenza.
In 1949, he joined the World Health Organization where he started its veterinary public health unit and later served as chief of medical research, promotion, and development. Dr. Kaplan helped develop a safer rabies vaccine, working with a research team at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia that developed new rabies vaccines for humans and animals in the 1960s and 1970s. He also returned to Penn Vet as a visiting professor of epidemiology and public health a few times during those years.
From 1976 to 1988, Dr. Kaplan served as secretary general of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, where he worked for nuclear, chemical, and biological disarmament. The organization, along with its founder Joseph Rotblat, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995. Dr. Kaplan operated from a basic belief that the veterinarian is a vital proponent in protecting humanity.
