Robert Carl Baker (December 29, 1921 – March 13, 2006) was an American inventor and Cornell University professor.
Baker had in fact developed this recipe while working at Penn State, but it never gained appreciation until he joined the faculty at Cornell.
He married his wife, Jacoba Munson, in 1944, and together they raised three sons, Myron, Dale, and Kermit, and four daughters, Regina, Reenie, Johanna, and Karen.
In the TV series The Wire, three of the street drug dealer characters discuss who may have invented the chicken nugget and what fortune it may have brought him, with D'Angelo Barksdale, the Crew Chief, pointing out that any such person would have been unlikely to have received any great reward but rather the heads of McDonald's were more likely to have been the main beneficiaries.
In the Netflix series Bill Nye Saves the World, Baker is portrayed by actor Michael Ian Black in the angry scientist section of season 3 episode 4.