Sir
Robert Robinson OM PRS FRSE (13
September 1886 – 8 February 1975) was a British organic chemist and Nobel laureate recognised
in 1947 for his research on plant dyestuffs (anthocyanins) and alkaloids. In 1947, he also received the Medal of Freedom with
Silver Palm. He was born at Rufford House Farm, near Chesterfield, Derbyshire the son of James Bradbury Robinson, a maker of
surgical dressings, and his wife, Jane Davenport.
Robinson went to school at the Chesterfield
Grammar School and the private Fulneck
School. He then studied Chemistry at the University of Manchester,
graduating BSc in 1905. In 1907 he was awarded an 1851 Research Fellowship from
the Royal
Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 to continue his research at the University of
Manchester. He was appointed as the first Professor of Pure and Applied Organic
Chemistry in the School of
Chemistry at the University of Sydney in
1912. He was briefly at St Andrews University (1920–22)
and then was offered the Chair of Organic Chemistry at Manchester University. In
1928 he moved from there to be a professor at University College London where
he stayed only two years. He was the Waynflete Professor of Chemistry at Oxford University from
1930 and a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. Robinson
Close in the Science Area at Oxford is named after him, as is the Robert Robinson
Laboratory at the University of Liverpool,
the Sir Robert Robinson Laboratory of Organic Chemistry at the University of Manchester and the Robinson and Cornforth Laboratories at
the University of Sydney. Robinson was a strong amateur chess player.
He represented Oxford University in a friendly match with a team from Bletchley Park in December 1944; in which he lost his game to pioneering
computer scientist I. J. Good. He was president of the British Chess Federation from
1950–53, and with Raymond Edwards he co-authored the book The Art and
Science of Chess (Batsford, 1972). His synthesis of tropinone, a precursor of cocaine, in 1917 was not only a big step in alkaloid chemistry but also showed that tandem reactions in a one-pot synthesis are capable of forming bicyclic molecules.