page_title: John Harry Robertson
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: John Harry Robertson / Career
caption_attribution_description: the Parkinson Building, University of Leeds (29/03/2005). Photograph: User:Gunnar Larsson
context_page_description: John Harry Robertson FRSC, FInstP was a British crystallographer whose work was important in the development of crystallographic techniques.
context_section_description: After his graduation, Robertson worked for three years at the Explosives Division of ICI Nobel in Ayrshire. Following this, he returned to the University of Edinburgh to work on a PhD on the X-ray structure of strychnine hydrobromide. To assist with this, he received a Senior Scholarship from the Carnegie Trust. His PhD adviser was Arnold Beevers, and the pair remained friends throughout their lives. In 1949 he completed his thesis, entitled X-ray Analysis of Complex Structures. He went on to do post-doctoral research at Pennsylvania State in 1950-1, before working as a Research Assistant to Dorothy Hodgkin at Oxford.
  In 1954, Robertson appointed as a lecturer at the University of Leeds, where he remained for the majority of his working life. Between 1964-8, he was seconded to the University of Dar es Salaam, where he served as Chair of Chemistry. During his time there, he was responsible for creating both new laboratories and a new curriculum. Upon his return to Leeds in 1968, he was promoted to senior lecturer.
  
  Robertson was a well-liked figure in the university. He managed the Colvin Library, a departmental common room and library for chemistry students. He continued to run this even after his retirement. Robertson was described by his colleague John Lydon as:
  "a kindly, caring man…meticulous in those civilities we all intend, but do not always get round to… He took pains to make contact with newly arrived research students from abroad and worked hard to make them feel at home… at a deeper level, John Robertson was of the same mould and generation as other crystallographic social crusaders like Katy Lonsdale and J.D. Bernal and in his own quiet way was no less determined that the universities should be centres of tolerance and social progress… For over three decades, he was more than anyone else, the human face of the School of Chemistry."
caption: The Parkinson Building, University of Leeds
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