Talbot, Richard B. (Richard Burritt), d. 1994
Biographical Note
Dr. Richard Burritt Talbot was professor, Biomedical Sciences and Veterinary Medical Informatics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg. He also served as a consultant in the areas of veterinary medical regulatory and governmental affairs, veterinary informatics, and veterinary medical pharmacology and toxicology.
Richard Talbot was born and reared in Marshall County, Kansas. He attended Kansas State University where he was awarded baccalaureate and doctor of veterinary medicine degrees. He later obtained a Ph.D. degree from Iowa State Unversity.
Talbot also was a faculty member at Iowa State University and the University of Georgia. He started at Iowa State as an instructor of physiology and moved through the ranks to associate professor. At the University of Georgia, he served as professor, as chairman of the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, as director of the Institute for Comparative Medicine, and as dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine.
Dr. Talbot came to Virginia Tech from the University of Georgia in 1975 to help the university plan and develop the Virginia/Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine. He served as dean of the college until the first class was graduated in 1984. From 1984 until October of 1987 he was devoted full-time to research and teaching. For the next two years, he served as director of the Office of New Animal Drug Evaluation at the U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) while on leave from Virginia Tech. At the FDA, a part of Talbot's work was the oversight of evaluation for new animal drug entities requesting approval to market in the United States. Other initiatives included the management of new drug applications using electronic submissions, and the creation of procedures to implement the Generic Animal Drug and Patent Restoration Act. Talbot returned to teaching and research in November of 1989.
His work was funded by the FDA and the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to develop an information base on potential drug residues in food products of animal origin. He also worked in the areas of pharmacologic and toxicologic effects of the stable rare earth compounds. Talbot was a consultant to several universities and pharmaceutical companies, to the National Institutes of Health, the Bureau of Health Manpower, the FDA, the USDA, and Hazelton Laboratories Corporation. He served on the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council Committee on Veterinary Medical Sciences. He served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Veterinary Medical Education, as president-elect of the American Veterinary Computer Society, and chairman of the American Veterinary Medical Association's Committee on Informatics. He was editor of Veterinary Pharmaceuticals and Biologicals, a standard reference work for veterinary medicine. Dr. Talbot's activities also included service on the Board of Directors of Hazelton Corporation, a life sciences corporation, and First Virginia Bank of the Southwest. He was a member and president-elect of the Rotary Club of Blacksburg, Virginia, and an elder in the Presbyterian Church.
On September 8, 1994, at the age of 61, Dr. Talbot died alongside all passengers and crew members of USAir Flight 427 when it crashed due to mechanical failure while landing at Pittsburgh International Airport. The Richard B. Talbot Memorial Scholarship at the Virginia/Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine (VMRCVM) was established in his honor soon after, and the VMRCVM's Richard B. Talbot Educational Resources Center was dedicated in 1996.