[1] His father Manley Jefferson Evans (1878–1970) and mother Alice Jennie Turner (1882–1965) married in August 1905 in O'Neill, Nebraska.
In the 8th grade, even before he entered high school, he was playing percussion instruments professionally in danceable jazz bands.
He also did research on health problems caused by ill-advised use, in the 1920s, of radium in medicine, tonics, body adornment, or amusing novelty.
[7] In 1938 he was the director for the construction of MIT's Markle Cyclotron, which became operational in 1939, and produced radioisotopes that were sent to dozens of medical research centers and companies.
[9] In May 1941, Evans and the USA's other leading experts on the safe handling of radioactive materials held a one-day meeting at the National Bureau of Standards.
He presented all of the data to the group of experts and suggested a maximum permissible body burden of 0.1 microcuries of radium.
He individually asked each of the experts, including Gioacchino Failla, Leon Francis Curtiss (1985–1983), and Harrison Stanford Martland (1883–1954), for their opinions.
[5] In a January 1946 article published in The Atlantic Monthly, Evans summarized various medical applications of nuclear physics.
[12] On his initiative, the Center for Human Radiobiology was established by the Atomic Energy Commission at Argonne National Laboratory to study the long-term effects of radium exposure.
[8] The Columbia Chapter of the Health Physics Society (CCHPS) annually awards the Robley D. Evans Commemorative Medal.