Robert Sydney Cunningham was born and raised in Anderson, SC. He graduated from Davidson College with B.S. and M.A. degrees in 1911, at the age of twenty. He continued his studies in Baltimore at Johns Hopkins, receiving the M.D. degree in 1915. After graduation R.S. Cunningham became an instructor in the Anatomy Department at Johns Hopkins. He remained at Johns Hopkins for the next ten years. In 1925 he became head of the Department of Anatomy (1925-1937) at the newly reorganized Vanderbilt University Medical School. He left Vanderbilt in 1937 to become Dean of the Albany Medical School. Dr. Cunningham ended his career as visiting Professor of Histology at the University of Virginia in Richmond. A close friend, Edna H. Tompkins, wrote this about Dr. Cunningham at the time of his death: "Dr. Cunningham was a brilliant but shy man, who shunned the limelight and had no interests outside of his home, his garden and his intellectual pursuits."