Person: Dunbar, Robert Taylor
Robert Dunbar graduated from Edinburgh University. After service in World War I he lectured in Physics at Edinburgh. He later moved to University College Cardiff and became Professor of Physics there.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Robert Dunbar had eight older siblings: Isabella (born about 1876), Elizabeth (born about 1877), John (born about 1879), Marguerite (born about 1881), Mary (born about 1883), James (born about 1885), Thomas (born about 1886) and William (born about 1887).
- Robert Dunbar entered the Eastern School, Broughty Ferry when he was five years old, moving to the Western School, Broughty Ferry after a year.
- Dunbar appears to have taken eight years from first matriculation to the award of his degree and this seems puzzling.
- The only additional facts we can add to those given above are that Dunbar was awarded the Robert Wilson Memorial Prize for Chemistry from Edinburgh University for session 1910 and that he was runner-up for the Mackay-Smith scholarship in Natural Philosophy in 1910.
- On 16 August 1915 Dunbar received his Commission Documents sent to Captain Robert Taylor Dunbar, Royal Garrison Artillery.
- At the end of the war Dunbar returned to Edinburgh University.
- In the following year she resigned in order to marry Robert Dunbar.
- Robert Dunbar was awarded his doctorate in 1924.
- Dunbar left Edinburgh in 1924 to take up the position of Senior Lecturer in Physics at University College Cardiff.
- In his first paper, communicated by Professor Barkla to the Philosophical Magazine (Dunbar, 1925), experiments extending over a period of years were described.
- A second more elaborate investigation was carried out by Dunbar (1928) in the Viriamu Jones Laboratory, Cardiff, and published in an important paper in May 1928.
- Despite his research contributions, when Dunbar became head of department in Cardiff he made it known that he believed that universities should concentrate on teaching and that research was best done in special research institutes such as the National Physical Laboratory in the UK or the Max Planck Institutes in Germany.
- Robert Dunbar joined the Edinburgh Mathematical Society in December 1914 while still an undergraduate in Edinburgh.
Born 8 February 1889, Broughty Ferry, Angus, Scotland. Died 19 November 1965, Edinburgh, Scotland.
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References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
