Anthony William Robbins was born on Jan. 9, 1941, in Manhattan. His father, I.D. Robbins, was a civic reformer and a builder who constructed low-cost homes in Brooklyn and the Bronx. His mother, Carolyn (Marx) Robbins was an editor and columnist.Dr. Robbins received his bachelor’s degree in biochemical sciences in 1962 from Harvard University, graduated from the Yale School of Medicine in 1967 and received a master’s degree in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School in 1969. He trained in internal medicine as an intern and resident but chose a career in progressive health policy.After serving as Vermont’s health commissioner, he held a similar position in Colorado from 1976 to 1978. He barred smoking in the health department’s offices long before workplace bans extended nationwide. And he sought the end of the use of plutonium — and favored a shutdown — at the notorious Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant outside Denver. It closed in 1992.In addition to Ms. Freeman, whom he married in 1990, Dr. Robbins is survived by his sons Jack and Richard Robbins from his first marriage, in 1963, to Jennifer (Lauterbach) Robbins, an assistant attorney general of Maryland. That marriage ended with her death in 1987. He is also survived by a brother, John, and four grandchildren.From 2003 to 2019, Dr. Robbins and Ms. Freeman coedited the Journal of Public Health Policy. In 2017, when The Washington Post reported that the first Trump administration barred the use of seven words by officials of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robbins devised a mischievous contest: Could any journal readers use all seven words — vulnerable, entitlement, diversity, transgender, fetus, evidence-based and science-based — in a single sentence?They could. The journal received 130 entries from 10 countries on four continents.The winner of the comic relief category was: “Vulnerable to temperature regarding sex selection, the embryo (a fetus in live-birth species) of the Olive Ridley sea turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea) shows a statistical science-based predilection for transgender fluctuations relative to egg temperature; evidence-based gender entitlement devolves to the female as sand and water temperatures rise and diversity declines.”
