Robert Milton Zollinger (September 4, 1903 – June 12, 1992) was an American general surgeon and professor of surgery at Ohio State University.

[1] As a child, he ran a business delivering milk and vegetables from his family's farm to neighbors by pony and cart.

[1] Zollinger was granted a surgical internship at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston by the prominent surgeon Harvey Cushing, who suggested that Zollinger spend six months volunteering with the surgeon Elliott Cutler at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine prior to starting his internship, which he did.

Zollinger became an assistant professor in surgery at Harvard in 1939 and published his first textbook with Cutler, Atlas of Surgical Operations, in 1939.

They named the disease Zollinger–Ellison syndrome, which was later shown to be caused by excess secretion of the hormone gastrin by neuroendocrine tumors of the pancreas.