Harold Roper Robinson, 1889-1955

Abstract

Harold Roper Robinson, physicist and, in later life, outstanding figure in university administration, was born at 36 Ainslie Street, Ulverston, in Lancashire, on 26 November 1889. Until the outbreak of war in 1914 his life, with the exception of brief holidays, was spent in his home county. He was a faithful Lancastrian, although affectionately aware of the weaknesses as well as of the virtues of his county brethren, as witness, for instance, his ‘Lancashire men, almost as markedly as their Yorkshire neighbours, combine a great pride in their own plain-speaking with an even greater intolerance of plain-speaking in others’, quoted here as a typical Robinson pronouncement.