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Donald Struan Robertson

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British classical scholar (1885–1961)

Donald Struan RobertsonFBA
Head-and-shoulders portrait of Robertson in early middle age, in a formal suit, facing the cameraPhotographed at an unknown date
Born(1885-06-28)28 June 1885
London
Died5 October 1961(1961-10-05) (aged 76)
Cambridge
OccupationClassical scholar
Spouses
Petica Coursolles Jones ​ ​(m. 1909; died 1941)​
Margaret Ann Carey ​(m. 1956)​
Children
Relatives
Academic background
Education
Academic work
InstitutionsTrinity College, Cambridge
Military career
AllegianceUnited Kingdom
Service / branchBritish Army
RankMajor
UnitRoyal Army Service Corps
WarsFirst World War

Donald Struan Robertson FBA (28 June 1885 – 5 October 1961) was a classical scholar, particularly noted for his work on Apuleius, and for 22 years the Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge. He was the father of the classicist Charles Martin Robertson and the art historian Giles Henry Robertson, and the brother of the botanist Agnes Arber.

Life

Robertson was born in London, the son of Agnes Lucy Turner, a descendant of Robert Chamberlain, a ceramicist, and Henry Robert Robertson, an artist. After education as a day pupil at Westminster School, he won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, and was placed in the first class of both parts of the Classical Tripos, graduating in 1908. Having won several prizes as an undergraduate, he competed for, and in 1909 won, a Trinity fellowship with a dissertation on the manuscript tradition of Apuleius's Apologia which he illustrated with stories from Apuleius's Metamorphoses.

The whole of Robertson's academic life, from undergraduate study to retirement, was spent in Cambridge at Trinity College. In 1911, he was appointed as an assistant lecturer in the college. During the First World War, he served as an officer in the Royal Army Service Corps, rising to the rank of major. He returned to Trinity in 1919, and lectured and supervised there until he succeeded, in 1928, A. C. Pearson as the Regius Professor of Greek. He held that chair until 1950. Between 1947 and 1951, he was vice-master of Trinity.

Robertson published his first book, A Handbook of Greek and Roman Architecture, in 1929; however, the work for which he is best remembered is his text of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, published in the Budé series in three volumes between 1940 and 1945.

Robertson was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1940. He received honorary degrees from the universities of Durham, Glasgow, and Athens. He died in Cambridge, aged 76, on 5 October 1961.

Family

Robertson and his first wife, Petica Coursolles, née Jones, married in 1909. They were the parents of Charles Martin Robertson, an eminent scholar of Greek vase painting, and Giles Henry Robertson, Professor of Fine Art at the University of Edinburgh. Petica Robertson, an air-raid warden, was killed by a German bomb on 24 February 1941, the only person to die from bombing in Cambridge during the Second World War. Robertson remarried in 1956, to Margaret Ann Carey, the widow of his Trinity colleague George Carey.

His sister Agnes Arber, a botanist, was the first female life scientist to become a Fellow of the Royal Society. Of his other two sisters, one, Janet, was a painter, while the other, Margaret Hills, became a suffragist organiser and the first woman to sit on Stroud Urban District Council.

Further reading

  • Sandbach, Francis Harry (1962). "Donald Struan Robertson, 1885–1961". Proceedings of the British Academy. 48: 411–425.

References

  1. ^ Matthew, H. C. G.; Harrison, B., eds. (23 September 2004). "The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. ref:odnb/30427. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/30427. Retrieved 7 December 2019. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ "Trinity College Chapel – Donald Struan Robertson". Trinity College, Cambridge. Retrieved 31 May 2024.
  3. British Academy fellowship entry Archived March 4, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
  4. "Casualty Details: Robertson, Petica Corsolles". Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Retrieved 15 November 2024.
  5. Packer, Kathryn (23 September 2004). "Arber , Agnes". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/30427. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  6. Hanshaw Thomas, H. (1960). "Agnes Arber, 1879–1960". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 6..
Academic offices
Preceded byAlfred Chilton Pearson Regius Professor of Greek Cambridge University
1928 - 1950 		Succeeded byDenys Page
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