Robert Gilmore McKinnell

McKinnell, Robert Gilmore, age 98 of St. Paul, Minnesota, died June 21, 2025. Bob was preceded in death by his much loved and cherished wife, Beverly. He was also preceded in death by his companion in his later years, Suzanne Madison Rohman. He is survived by children Nancy, Robert (Tonya), and Susan (Charles), as well as grandchildren Emma (Stefan), Honor, Arthur, Alexandra, and Maxine.
Bob was born in Springfield, Missouri in 1926 to William Parks and Mary Catherine (Gilmore) McKinnell. He was their third child, after siblings Mary and Bill. He served in the United States Navy during World War II and the Korean War. He was proud to have received his Ensign's commission at the tender age of 19, and attained the rank of Lieutenant while on duty in Korea.
Bob held undergraduate degrees from the University of Notre Dame and Drury University, with a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, where he was awarded a National Cancer Institute Predoctoral Fellowship. Following Minnesota, he became a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia from 1958 to 1961, in the lab of Thomas King and Robert Briggs, pioneers of nuclear transplantation (a form of cloning).
Bob taught and did cancer research for nine years at Newcomb College of Tulane University. He met and married Beverly Kerr in New Orleans in 1964. They returned to Minnesota in 1970 where Bob was a professor of genetics and cell biology, becoming a professor emeritus in 1999. His research used cloning techniques to investigate viral causes of cancer. He surveyed leopard frogs in Minnesota from the 1960s to the 2010s, documenting their health and decline, and consulted on deformed frogs in the 1990s.
Bob was the recipient of a NATO Senior Scientist Fellowship at the University of Saint Andrews, Scotland in 1974. He was the 1981-1982 recipient of the Royal Society of London Guest Research Fellowship at the Nuffield Department of Pathology, Oxford University Medical School. Bob was selected to be a NATO senior scientist again, this time in the Department of Radiotherapy and Nuclear Medicine, Akademisch Ziekenhuis, Universiteit Gent, Belgium in 1984. He was named University of Minnesota Morse/Alumni Distinguished Professor in 1992 for outstanding contributions to undergraduate education. He received the Prince Hitachi Prize for Comparative Oncology awarded by the Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research in 1998. He was the recipient of research grants from the American Cancer Society, the National Science Foundation, the National Cancer Institute, and the Damon Runyon Memorial Fund for Cancer Research, as well as other research organizations.
Over the course of his career, Bob wrote several books on the subjects of cloning and cancer. His Cloning: A biologist reports was judged to be "outstanding" by the Library Journal (March, 1980). In 1998, Bob co-authored The Biological Basis of Cancer, Cambridge University Press. He is the author or co-author of well over 100 articles published in scientific journals.
Bob was a member of the University of Minnesota Cancer Center, the Minnesota Academy of Medicine and was an emeritus member of the American Association for Cancer Research and the American Association for Cancer Education. He was involved with the International Society of Differentiation from the first meeting in Nice, France in the 1970s and served as president of the society in the 1980s. He was an enthusiastic member of Gown in Town from the 1970s to the group's end in 2004. In his later years, Bob was particularly fond of having lunch with the staff of the Wangensteen Historical Library at the University of Minnesota, as well as the monthly meetings of the small but enthusiastic Minnesota History of Medicine group.
Bob always enjoyed traveling, particularly to Scotland and particularly over the summer solstice, when the days are longest and the nights never truly darken. It seems fitting, then, that he left this world as the solstice began.
A memorial service will be held at 10:00 a.m., Friday, July 18, at House of Hope Presbyterian Church, 797 Summit Ave, St Paul, MN 55105. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the American Cancer Society.