Dr. Baxter is best known as the author of the Parkland (Parkland Memorial Hospital, Dallas) or Baxter Formula* that is almost universally used as the starting point in the fluid resuscitation of patients with burns. However, he had career long influence in the field of burns. He established the first Masters Program in Burn Nursing sponsored by the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD which produced many graduates.

At the University of Texas (Southwestern) Medical School, Dallas, Dr. Baxter supervised the training of 43 Burn Fellows. He was an early leader in skin banking employing freeze drying for the preservation of allograft skin. He subsequently showed that cryopreserved dermal allograft supported vacuum blister-prepared sheets and expanded epidermal autograft for the closure of full-thickness burn wounds (J Trauma 1985; 25: 106).

Dr. Baxter hosted the Seventh Annual National Burn Seminar (1967) during which a committee was appointed to draft a charter and constitution for the formation of the American Burn Association. He served as its fifth President and the first Editor-in-Chief of its official journal, The Journal of Burn Care and Rehabilitation (1980-1997).

*Crystalloid resuscitation of burn shock. Chapt. 1. In contemporary Burn Management Polk, H.C., Jr. and Stone, H.H., eds. Little, Brown and Co., Boston. 1971, pp 7-32