Robert Schaffer was an American chemist.
Schaffer was born in Brooklyn, and studied at Brooklyn College. He served in the Army during World War II and was assigned to work at Los Alamos as part of the Special Engineer Detachment (SED). He was married to Edith Schaffer, who also worked at Los Alamos.
After the war, Schaffer earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from Washington University in St. Louis. He went to work for the National Bureau of Standards and Technology (NIST), eventually becoming a group leader in the organic analytical chemistry division. Among his achievements was the development of a standard chemical testing procedure for blood so that results such as cholesterol could be accurately compared between laboratories.
For his work, Schaffer was recipient of the Department of Commerce’s Silver Medal, the American Association for Clinical Chemistry’s award, the NIST Edward B. Rosa Award and the Russell J. Eilers Award from the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute.
Robert Schaffer died on May 8, 2007, in Rockville, Maryland.