[4] At Pennsylvania State University, he and his wife, Londa Schiebinger, co-directed the Science, Medicine and Technology in Culture Program for nine years.

However, Robert Proctor is perhaps best known for his groundbreaking 2012 history of the tobacco industry, "Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition",[7] winner of the Rachel Carson Prize in 2014.

In 2008, Proctor served as an expert witness in a wrongful death suit against Philip Morris and used the n-word in his testimony, triggering a mistrial.

[12] Later, in 2019, Proctor again drew scrutiny for repeatedly saying the racial slur aloud when quoting from cigarette advertisements in a guest lecture at Stanford Law School.

He responded to this backlash with, "I didn't 'use' the N-word in my lecture, I showed and cited its use in three different brands of cigarettes sold in the middle decades of the twentieth century.