Many researchers have been involved in Cornell's pioneering work in animal reproductive physiology. But one in particular stands out: Robert H. Foote, the J.G. Schurman Professor of Animal Science. In 1958, the Lalor Foundation and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences awarded Foote his first grants to study DNA in rabbits. This work later would be used as a model for DNA research on other domestic animals and would serve as the foundation for animal and human fertilization techniques and as an early step in the scientific route toward animal cloning. This is a look at Foote's remarkable life and career.

Professor Foote today. Top of page: Lt. Robert Foote receives a Bronze Star from Maj. Gen. charles L. Bolte of the U.S. Army 34th Infantry Division in Livorno, Italy, August, 1945.

A German mortar shell landed near the railroad tracks, and its explosive concussion sent Bob Foote tumbling down the track's embankment. Shrapnel pierced his back and legs, leaving him badly injured. It was Oct. 21, 1944, near Bruyres, France.

Foote had been leading his unit through the Vosges Mountains, a range in northeastern France, hoping to help push back a weakening but still entrenched German army. In a trek up from southern France, the mortar was the first major German resistance the unit had met. "If it had been any closer," Foote recalls, "it would have been in my back pocket."

Foote's soldiers carried their young lieutenant out of harm's way. They weren't your usual G.I. Joes, but Nisei -- Japanese-American soldiers of the famed "Go for Broke" 442nd Regimental Combat Team, many of whom had been incarcerated in U.S. internment camps since America's entry into the war. It was to become the most-decorated American unit during World War II.

For three days Foote waited in a makeshift tent to be airlifted to a hospital while medics pumped morphine and penicillin into him. "It rained hard," he remembers. "And I was a fortunate one. Several successive firefights decimated our unit." Out of 180 riflemen in K Company, only a few escaped death or injury.

No one could know just how profound an effect that German mortar would have on the world of biological science.

Born in Gilead, Conn., in 1922, Robert H. Foote was reared on a farm, attended a one-room school and appeared headed for a career in dairy farming. But two days after graduating from the University of Connecticut with a degree in animal husbandry, Foote was in basic training. After attending officer training school at Fort Benning, Ga., he joined the 442nd in early 1944.

The war injury at Bruyres ended Foote's plans to return to work on the family farm. Instead he sought advice from Al Mann, a professor of animal husbandry at the University of Connecticut. Mann called his friend, Ken Turk, head of the animal science department at Cornell, who invited Foote to Ithaca. After an interview with animal science Professor Glenn Salisbury, Foote was admitted to Cornell. By 1950 Foote had earned his doctorate and stayed on to study male reproductive physiology in animals.

It was in 1958 that Foote began his pioneering work by writing what was Cornell's first grant proposal to study DNA synthesis in the testes of rabbits and to study the dynamics of spermatogenesis. Now, more than 40 years later, Foote has to his credit about 500 scientific papers on the subject of animal science, biology and animal reproduction. From this work has sprung great improvements in livestock breeding and a better understanding of the reproductive process in mammals.

Foote was among the earliest users of the radioisotopes carbon 14 and tritiated thymidine to label DNA during spermatogenesis. Understanding this process led to better methods of monitoring testicular function and harvesting more sperm for the artificial breeding of agricultural animals.

He also performed the classic work that established that all eggs in rabbits -- as in other mammals, including humans -- are formed as oocytes in the fetal ovary. Today it is well understood, as a result of Foote's research, that a female is born with all the eggs that she will ever have, with the store depleted throughout her reproductive life mostly by degeneration but also by ovulation.

Foote's animal reproduction research also led to improvements in animal health, resulting in a saving to the cattle industry of hundreds of millions of dollars.

There is one thing Foote understands clearly: Had the concussion from a German mortar shell not thrown him down a railroad embankment in 1944, injuring him and forcing him to re-evaluate his life, he would have returned to the farm after the war.

By joining the scientific ranks, he was able to be instrumental in building a strong foundation for today's reproductive physiologists and geneticists.

"As scientists, we were fortunate to travel the right road," Foote says. "But I got on this road accidentally and then had a lot of help along the way."

Above: Professor Foote in his office.