Robert C. Hsiung

Robert C. (Bob) Hsiung, 66, of Chicago, Illinois, died on August 31, 2025, in Noboribetsu City, Hokkaido, Japan, from complications following a bicycle accident while on a bicycle tour of the Hokkaido countryside.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, on October 7, 1958, Bob grew up in Park Forest, a far-south suburb. He was valedictorian for the graduating class of 1976 at Rich Central High School in Olympia Fields, Illinois. He loved all sports, including playing basketball in the family home's driveway, pick-up games of tackle football in the field next to the elementary school, throwing frisbees, and riding his bike. Bob was a talented musician, playing violin in the local youth symphony and soloing on piano for a performance with the Chicago Heights Symphony Orchestra. The first LP he bought was Elton John's "Greatest Hits." He loved math, computers, and all sorts of puzzles and games. His mastery of probability and statistics made him a fearsome opponent in Strat-O-Matic Baseball and Football, Poker, and Hearts. Using primitive computer software, he wrote a program that enabled him to play Mah-Jong. In order to maximize his point totals in Scrabble, he memorized all the two-letter words in The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary.
At Harvard University he graduated magna cum laude in 1980 with a degree in applied mathematics. He earned his M.D. from Northwestern University in 1984, specializing in psychiatry. After completing a residency at Yale University and a year with a private practice in California, Bob returned to the Midwest as a psychiatrist at the Student Counseling and Resources Service of the University of Chicago, providing both psychotherapy and medication management to generations of undergraduates and graduate students. His supervisor of many years often remarked on Bob's willingness to take on the most challenging patients, with whom he seemed to have an affinity and infinite patience. In 2010, Bob left the University, opening a private practice and relishing being his own boss.
Capitalizing on his tech skills and overloading on coffee and Diet Coke, Bob developed and managed Psycho-Babble, an online support group, one of the first of its kind. People around the globe credited Dr. Bob and his forum for saving their lives. In her 4/16/2010 New York Times piece, Virginia Heffernan praised him, Psycho-Babble's "brilliant and reticent Web mastermind." Psycho-Babble led to more engagement with the group therapy world.
In addition to his own photography-portraits, landscapes, birds, graffiti, and indecipherable closeups among his favorite subjects-he loved movies. In his semi-retirement, he sharpened his skills in a photo critique group and via film classes at the Gene Siskel Film Center. He favored plotless, intense, often languidly cinematic films over more straightforwardly narrative ones. His taste in theater tilted toward the innovative and experimental-Kabuki Othello, Antigone as a puppet production, or an unknown premiere.
Patient behind the camera lens, he loved speed when he was behind the wheel, astride his bike, or on skis, especially on the downhills. For years he biked with the Oak Park Cycle Club and then with a core group of strong riders who enjoyed biking and beer, frequently slaking their thirst at 3 Floyds and other area craft breweries. In 1992, on his faithful Cannondale in his signature loud shorts, he hit 51 mph on a New Hampshire descent, an accomplishment he memorialized in a photo. Cross-country skiing on the prairie bored him. If the Tetons weren't at hand, he settled for Wisconsin or the Palos Forest Preserves.
From a food critic friend, he acquired a taste for fine and bold dining, which overlapped neatly with his travel itch. He traveled widely on six continents, devouring whale sashimi after a whale watching excursion in Iceland, feasting on grilled wallaby in Australia, and snorkeling with penguins and manta rays in the Galápagos. Bob was endlessly eager to explore and ever drawn to novelty.
Bob is survived by his former wife, Ingrid Gould, of Chicago; his brother David C. Hsiung and his wife Rachel of Huntingdon, Pennsylvania; their children Benjamin and Rebecca; and many cousins and their families. No service is currently being planned.