Robert J. Ertel, who had a long career as a professor of pharmacology in the School of Pharmacy, died Dec. 10, 2019, at 87.
Ertel was already a Pitt faculty member when Rege Vollmer became his student in 1972; they became faculty colleagues in 1977. Ertel taught some of the school’s core courses in pharmacology and physiology, as well as a very popular course in bionucleonics—the use of radioactive materials in research—as Vollmer recalls. The latter course was one “that everyone loved to take. He was the only one who had the expertise. It was very important.”