Born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on January 27, 1929, Richard B. Hornick went to Johns Hopkins University, where he played intercollegiate football. He received the MD degree from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and accomplished residency training on the Osler service at Hopkins before serving as a Captain in the US Army at Walter Reed Medical Unit at Fort Detrick, Maryland. He then moved to the University of Maryland School of Medicine to serve as Chief Medical Resident where his career was importantly influenced by Theodore E. Woodward, Chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine.
At the University of Maryland, Dick became Professor of Medicine and Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases. Dick left Maryland in 1979 to become Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center and Physician in Chief at Strong Memorial Hospital, positions he held until 1985 when he was appointed Dean for Affiliated Hospitals and External Relations for the School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Rochester. In 1987, he moved to Florida to become Vice President for Medical Education and Chief Academic Officer at the Orlando Regional Medical Center (Orlando Health), a position he occupied until 1999 when he served briefly as interim academic chair of the Internal Medicine Department before leaving administrative positions to devote his time to teaching students, caring for his patients, and serving as Medical Director of Orlando Regional Medical Center's travel medicine clinic.
During the Maryland years in the 1960s and 1970s, Dick and Ted Woodward teamed up to become the architects of one of the strongest infectious diseases programs in the country, focusing on diseases important to the US military. Dick recruited to join his division young physicians who helped to accomplish great things in research and then went on to become leaders in academic medicine at the University of Maryland and in other medical centers in the United States. Dick orchestrated a series of volunteer studies at the nearby Maryland House of Correction that advanced the field of infectious diseases. During those years, the pathophysiology of typhoid fever was meticulously studied by Hornick, Woodward, and Sheldon Greisman. His team worked with colleagues at the National Institutes of Health to identify the Norwalk virus, the first identified member of norovirus group. Noroviruses are the principal cause of food- and water-borne gastroenteritis worldwide. The infectious diseases team led by Dick worked with Sam Formal at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in studies that determined the pathogenesis of shigellosis and showed how stains of enterotoxigenic and enteroinvasive Escherichia coli caused acute diarrhea. Dick was involved with collaborative studies in tularemia, Q fever, and Rocky Mountain spotted fever with support of the US Army. Many of the research projects performed at Maryland under Dick's leadership were financially supported by the military. Dick and Ted both served important roles on the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board that met regularly at the Walter Reed Institute of Research in Washington, DC.
Dick was credited with building and guiding Orlando Health's Continuing Medical Education activity into a nationally recognized program. Dick convinced the leadership of Orlando Health during a challenging financial time to invest in medical education to keep the institution at the forefront of new medical knowledge. He recruited effective faculty members and helped to develop an outstanding residency program. Dick understood that clinical research was important to Orlando Health's residency program, and he worked to raise the institution's capacity for meaningful research. Dick was an effective fundraiser helping to build Orlando Health's training and research programs to important levels. The institution's medical education building was named in his honor the Richard B. Hornick, MD, Medical Education Building. The University of Central Florida created the Richard B. Hornick, MD, Faculty Award that would be given each year to “an affiliated or volunteer faculty member who had demonstrated outstanding dedication and a strong commitment to the educational program in the College of Medicine with contributions to the training of medical students and serving as an outstanding role model for students and faculty, thereby epitomizing Dr. Hornick's contribution to the College from 2007 to 2011.”
Dick became a member of the ACCA in 1966 and served as Vice President in 1990. He gave the Jeremiah Metzger Lecture in 1973. He was a founding member of the Infectious Diseases Society of America in 1963, an organization for which he served as President in 1986. In that year, he gave the Joseph E. Smadel Lecture at the national meeting of IDSA.
Dick has been recognized for his contributions to medical care, teaching, and research. He received a number of recognitions from the American College of Physicians. Dick served as Governor while at the University of Maryland, received the James D. Bruce Memorial Award, and he was awarded Mastership from that organization. Dick was elected to membership of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the American Association of Physicians, the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine, and the Society of Scholars at Johns Hopkins. Dick published more than 300 scientific articles, including scientific publications, book chapters, and review articles.
Dick was an athlete and enjoyed outdoor sports. He lost a kidney due to trauma while a college football player. He regularly enjoyed duck hunting near the Chesapeake Bay in the middle of winter. He was an avid tennis player until his later years when he took up golf. He enjoyed playing poker and boat rides with Susan, his wife, on the Winter Park chain of lakes.
Dick had wonderful interpersonal skills and, with a soft spoken voice and a smile, he encouraged acquaintances to work with him in the laboratory, clinic, or classroom. His self-effacing style and wish to recognize the contributions of others working with him were impressive. He was a master clinician and only stopped seeing patients 3 weeks before he died peacefully at home on August 9, 2011, in Winter Park, Florida, of chronic lymphocytic leukemia.