Robert A. Hedeen received his Bachelor of Arts degree at age nineteen, his master of arts at twenty, and his doctoral degree at twenty-four. He served in the U.S. Army for more than nine years, leaving to take a position of entomologist-director of the Cook County (Illinois) Mosquito Abatement District. In 1971, he became Chairman of the Biology Department at Salisbury State College (now Salisbury University) on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where he served for more than twenty years. He published more than thirty scientific articles concerning the ecology and control of insects and other arthropods of medical importance. Heeden has been an avid outdoorsman for all of his life and the author of Naturalist on the Nanticoke: The Natural History of a River on Maryland's Eastern Shore.