Robert Steinberg (chocolate maker)

Robert Wayne Steinberg (March 4, 1947 – September 17, 2008) was an American physician who co-founded Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker in 1996 with John Scharffenberger, his friend and former patient.

Robert Steinberg was born on March 4, 1947, in Boston, Massachusetts, to parents Arthur and Selma Levinson Steinberg. His mother was an elementary school teacher while his father was a clinical psychologist. Steinberg's father died of Hodgkin's disease when he was a child.

Steinberg received his bachelor's degree in 1969 from Harvard University. He later earned his medical degree from the University of Connecticut in 1974. He first moved to San Francisco as part of a medical internship. He remained in the area and ran his own family practice for approximately twenty years in San Francisco and Ukiah, California.

Steinberg was diagnosed in 1989 with lymphoma, a disease which he would battle for nearly twenty years. At the time, Steinberg was given a 50% chance of succumbing to the disease within ten years of his diagnosis. He realized that his full-time profession as a physician would be difficult with the necessary medical treatment. As a result of his diagnosis, Steinberg began exploring his own interests and alternative career paths.

A friend of Steinberg's introduced him to chocolate making and gave him a 600-page book on the "science of chocolate making". Steinberg, who was a self-proclaimed foodie, had been interested in food and cooking since he was a child. The concept of making chocolate caught Steinberg's attention. Following his diagnosis, Steinberg travelled to Lyon, France, in 1993, where he became an apprentice at a small family-owned chocolate maker called Bernachon for a few weeks. His new interest in chocolate would later take him to a number of cacao growing nations including Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela.

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