Harold Roper Robinson

Early life Robinson was born at 36 Ainslie Street in Ulverston, Lancashire on 26 November 1889, the eldest of four brothers and one sister to James Robinson, a managing clerk in a solicitor's office. Harold was educated at the Wesleyan School then the Victoria Secondary School in Ulverston.

In 1908 he went to the University of Manchester to study physics on a scholarship. He graduated with a BSc in 1911 and gained an MSC in 1912. His postgraduate studies, and duties as an Assistant Lecturer. were interrupted by the First World War during which he served as a 2nd Lt in the Royal Garrison Artillery in France from 1915. He later transferred to the Field Survey Battalion of the Royal Engineers (mapping) first as a Captain then as an Adjutant.

After the war (1920) he gained a place as assistant director of the Physical Laboratory at Manchester.

"Professor Robinson came to Queen Mary College, University of London, from University College, Cardiff, as Head of the Physics Department. He is acknowledged as one of the greatest of Rutherford's collaborators. He devised and developed the techniques of X-ray photoelectric spectroscopy and X-ray emission spectroscopy which became valuable tools in chemical analysis. Arising from this work he also deduced the then most accurate values of ratios of atomic constants."

In 1942, he delivered the first Rutherford Memorial Lecture.

Robinson was appointed Vice-Principal of Queen Mary College in 1946.

Robinson decided to retire in 1953, but took the position of Vice-Chancellor of the University of London (1954–1955). Following her death in 1939

Publications H. R. Robinson, "Rutherford: life and work to the year 1919, with personal reminiscences of the Manchester period", in Rutherford at Manchester (ed. J. B. Birks), pp. 53–86 (Heywood & Co., London, 1962) H. R. Robinson and L. Wright, "Evan Jenkin Evans", Proc. Phys. Soc. 56, PP. 404–406 (1944).