Robert A. Schwartz

Robert Allen Schwartz (born June 30, 1947) is an American physician, biomedical researcher, university professor, and government official. He is Professor and Head of Dermatology, Professor of Medicine, Professor of Pediatrics, and Professor of Preventive Medicine and Community Health at the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Visiting Professor and Scholar of Public Affairs and Administration at the Rutgers School of Public Affairs and Administration, and serves on the Rutgers University Board of Trustees. He has made seminal contributions to medicine, including the discovery of AIDS-associated Kaposi sarcoma (KS-AIDS) and Schwartz–Burgess syndrome. In 2019 Schwartz joined the Trump administration as a member of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science at the University of California, Berkeley in 1969, a Master of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health in 1970, and a Doctor of Medicine at the New York Medical College in 1974, from which he graduated at the top of his class as a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. He trained in dermatology at the University of Cincinnati and at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. He advanced in academia, from the University of Arizona and the University of California, San Francisco, to the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, where in 1983 he became the first permanent head of dermatology, establishing a dermatology residency program in 1984. In 1981 Schwartz led one of the three groups that first described AIDS-associated Kaposi sarcoma (KS-AIDS). In 1978 he first described florid cutaneous papillomatosis. Schwartz is credited with the clinical description of new subtypes of Kaposi's sarcoma: telangiectatic Kaposi's sarcoma, keloidal Kaposi's sarcoma and ecchymotic Kaposi’s sarcoma. In 1981 he first described acral acanthotic anomaly (acral acanthosis nigricans). In 1980 Edmund Klein, Schwartz and associates published in Cancer one of the first effective treatments of Kaposi’s sarcoma, a type of cancer that became more frequent as the AIDS epidemic unfolded. Schwartz has authored several books, including Skin Cancer: Recognition and Management, a leading book on cutaneous oncology currently in its second edition. Schwartz has also written 10 monographs, and is the author of over 250 book chapters, 500 articles, and 200 other publications.