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.

Life

Robertson was born in London, the son of Agnes Lucy Turner, a descendant of Robert Chamberlain (''d''. 1798), ceramicist, and Henry Robert Robertson (1839–1921), an artist. After education 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''.DNB
accessed 19 October 2010 The whole of Robertson's academic life, from undergraduate to retirement, was spent at Trinity College. Interrupted only by war service, where he was commissioned in the

Royal Army Service Corps The Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) was a corps of the British Army responsible for land, coastal and lake transport, air despatch, barracks administration, the Army Fire Service, staffing headquarters' units, supply of food, water, fuel and dom ...

rising to the rank of major, Robertson lectured and supervised at Trinity until in 1928 he succeeded A. C. Pearson as the Regius Professor of Greek, holding the chair until 1950. 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.

Family

Robertson and his first wife, Petica Coursolles, née Jones (1883–1941), were parents to Charles Martin Robertson, an eminent scholar of Greek vase painting, and

Giles Henry Robertson Giles Henry Robertson FRSE RSA (Hon) (1913–1987) was a 20th-century British art historian and expert on the Italian Renaissance. Life He was born in Cambridge in 1913 the son of Prof Donald Struan Robertson, professor of Greek at Cambridge ...

, Professor of Fine Art at the University of Edinburgh. His sister Agnes Arber was a botanist and the first woman life scientist to become a Fellow of the Royal Society, and his sister Janet was painter.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Robertson, Donald Struan 1885 births 1961 deaths People educated at Westminster School, London Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge English classical scholars Members of the University of Cambridge faculty of classics Fellows of the British Academy British Army personnel of World War I Royal Army Service Corps officers Regius Professors of Greek (Cambridge)