William Robson

William Alexander Robson (14 July 1895 – 12 May 1980) Upon his death, The Guardian wrote that Robson was an "internationally renowned authority on public administration". Indeed, Robson played a key role in establishing public administration as an academic subject.

Early life, military service, and education Robson was born in a rural part of Middlesex, that would later become part of Greater London and would be known as North Finchley. It was a Jewish family and Robson was brought up in that religion, but like many Fabians, he later adopted a perspective of humanist agnosticism.

With the air conflict during World War I underway, Robson joined the Royal Flying Corps in 1915. Part of the RFC's Military Wing, In a review at the time, Flight magazine described the book as portraying, in non-technical language, the past, present, and possible future roles of aircraft, as well as how aircraft are built and how pilots are trained. He served in France, and also in defence of his home country during nighttime Zeppelin raids against London. He earned an LL.M. in 1928. The couple had two sons and a daughter. Remarks Robson made in America in 1923 drew the ire of syndicated columnist Winifred Black. Robson deplored the fate of highly educated women who after becoming a bride found their mental abilities "stagnating in the backwater of marriage." Black stressed the traditional values of being a wife and mother and said they required skills equal to that of most occupations.

The idea of starting a serious political journal came to Robson and Kingsley Martin, who also had a teaching position at the LSE at the time. Robson was the main leader of the Greater London Group until his death.

Robson was a co-founder of the Political Studies Association in the UK, and was very active in the formative years of the International Political Science Association, serving as its second president beginning in 1952. Nonetheless, Robson had the viewpoint of a reformer. George W. Jones has written:

He was an idealist who sought to use his talents to serve society, and to improve the quality of life, not only materially but also morally. His great ability was to assemble a huge mass of data, and to analyse order out of complexity, and to argue a coherent case for change. ... He was as if compelled by a sense of public duty to put his learning and scholarship to the service of society.

A tribute journal article published the following year said of Robson, "That overworked term 'seminal' may justly be ascribed to his work on public law, public enterprise, and local government."

The annual William Robson Memorial Prize is given to the best Ph.D. dissertation published at the LSE.