Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/221

 these plates, a result which was not confirmed by Dr. Max-Wolf of Heidelberg, who made special examination of several cases (Monthly Notices, lxiii. 303). Roberts's report of this research was presented in November 1902 {Monthly Notices, lxii. 26). Roberts joined the Royal Astronomical Society in 1882. In 1890 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1892 the honorary degree of D.Sc. was conferred on him by Trinity College, Dublin, on the occasion of its tercentenary. In 1895 the Royal Astronomical Society awarded the gold medal to Roberts for his photographs of star clusters and nebulae, the award being announced and the address being delivered by Captain (now Sir William) Abney, the leading authority on photography, who congratulated him on his 'conclusion that a reflector is better for his purpose than a refractor.' Roberts went to Vadso, Norway, on the Norse King, to observe the total solar eclipse of 9 August 1896, but an overcast sky prevented observations.

Roberts, who was a zealous liberal, interested himself in legislation affecting education. He was one of the governors of the University of North Wales. He died suddenly at Crowborough on 17 July 1904, and his cremated remains were entombed four years later in a stone in Birkenhead cemetery, Flaybrick Hill, Birkenhead, on 21 July 1908. After providing for his widow and other relatives, he left the residue of his large estate for the foundation of scholarships in the University of Liverpool and the university colleges of Wales, Bangor, and Cardiff.

He married (1) in 1875 Ellen Anne, daughter of Anthony Cartmel; and (2) in 1901 Dorothea Klumpke of San Francisco, a member of the staff of the National Observatory, Paris, who had been a fellow voyager on the Norse King in 1896. He had no children.

A photograph is in the British Museum series of portraits at South Kensington.

 ROBERTS, ROBERT DAVIES (1851–1911), educational administrator, born at Aberystwyth on 5 March 1851, was eldest son of Richard Roberts, timber merchant and shipowner of that town. His early training was sternly Calvinistic, but he quickly developed, with a studious temper, versatile human interests and a spirit of adventure. From a private school at Shrewsbury he proceeded to the Liverpool Institute, and thence to University College, London. Here he distinguished himself in geology; he graduated B.Sc. in the University of London with first-class honours and scholarship in that subject in 1870. In 1871 he entered Cambridge University as foundation scholar of Clare College, graduating B.A. in 1875 as second (bracketed) in the first class of the natural science tripos. He proceeded M.A. at Cambridge and D.Sc. at London in 1878; and was from 1884 to 1890 fellow of Clare College. He became fellow of University College, London, in 1888.

Meanwhile Roberts was lecturer in chemistry at University College, Aberystwyth, during 1877, and in 1884 was appointed university lecturer in geology at Cambridge. In geological study, especially on its palaeontological side, Roberts showed originality and imaginative powers. His 'Earth's History: an Introduction to Modern Geology' (1893) was well received both at home and in the United States. But Roberts was diverted from a pursuit in which he promised to achieve distinction by an ambition to organise and develop higher education among the classes that were at that time not touched by the universities. In 1881 he had become assistant and organising secretary to the syndicate at Cambridge which had been formed in 1873 to control the 'local lectures' or 'university extension' work. He was here engaged in association with Professor James Stuart and Professor G. F. Browne, afterwards bishop of Bristol. From 1885 to 1904 he was secretary to the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching, which, in the absence of a teaching university in London, had been founded as an independent organisation to direct the work in the metropolitan area. In 1891 he published his 'Eighteen Years of University Extension,' which contains an admirable account of the movement down to that date. In 1894 he returned to Cambridge to take full charge of the work under the Cambridge syndicate; and eight years later he became the first registrar of the Extension Board in the recently reconstituted University of London. This post he held till his death. The university extension movement owed much to Roberts's long service of more than thirty years. He sought to establish and maintain a high standard of 'extension' lecture, encouraging among the local committees continuous courses of study (often extending over three years). Devoted to Wales, he actively interested 