Robert Quarles Marston (February 12, 1923 – March 14, 1999) was an American physician, research scientist, governmental appointee and university administrator.

[1] After completing his internship at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, and a one-year residency at Vanderbilt University Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, Marston joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a medical researcher with the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, examining the infectious after-effects of whole-body irradiation, from 1951 to 1953.

[1] The Markle Foundation awarded Marston a grant as a "gifted practitioner" in the furtherance of his academic medical career.

[1] He rejoined MCV in 1959, as the assistant student affairs dean and an associate medical professor.

"[5] Marston believed that emphasizing one disease at the expense of other medical research was bad policy, and continued to support balanced, comprehensive funding priorities.

[7][8] After retiring as the University of Florida president emeritus in 1984, Marston returned to the Virginia Military Institute as a distinguished scholar, and later served on VMI's governing Board of Visitors during the controversy over the court-ordered admission of women.

[7] In 1985, he went back to the University of Florida faculty and conducted research and presented papers for the university's Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences and its College of Medicine,[7] co-edited The Medical Implications of Nuclear War[9] on behalf of the National Academy of Sciences, and served as the chairman of the Safety Advisory Committee for the Clean-Up of Three Mile Island.

[7] He also accepted the chairmanship of the Florida Marine Fishery Commission, tasked with the governance of the state's saltwater fishing industry and guardianship of its resources.