The Hon. Alexander William RobertsFRSEFRASFRSSA (4 December 1857 – 21 January 1938) was a Scottish-born, South African teacher and an amateur astronomer. He was an expert on the stars of the southern hemisphere and did much mapping of these stars. He was affectionately known as Roberts of Lovedale.
Life
He was born in Farr, in the county of Sutherland, Scotland. His father, William Henry Roberts, moved to Admiralty House, on Newhaven Road in Leith, north of Edinburgh in his youth.[1] Alexander was educated at St James Free Church School in Leith.[2]
He emigrated to South Africa in 1883, where he took a teaching position at the Lovedale Missionary Institution, teaching the native South Africans. (He would later serve as acting Principal at the institute, then Principal at Lovedale Training School). In South Africa he met David Gill who re-inspired his love of astronomy.[4]
In South Africa he pursued his interest in astronomy, first measuring the parallax and proper motion of Alpha Centauri and Beta Centauri. He then became a prolific observer of variable stars, particularly those that were members of a binary system. He continued his observations for over 30 years, and pioneered the study of close binary systems. He published over 100 works on these topics. Between 1891 and 1920 he made over 250,000 observations of 98 variable stars.
Much of his work was communicated through Edward C. Pickering, the director of the Harvard College Observatory. However, with the death of Pickering in 1919 he ceased further research. Instead he began to focus on politics and race relations in South Africa, teaching at the South African Native College at Fort Hare.[3]
The Prime Minister Jan Smuts appointed him as a senator to represent the interests of native Africans on the Native Affairs Commission in 1920, which he also chaired. Seen as an able and unbiased mediator he also chaired the commission into the 1920 riots at Port Elizabeth and the 1922 Bondelswarts Rebellion. In 1923 he also chaired the Native Churches Commission.[4]
In 1925, however, he did serve as the South African delegate to the I.A.U. General Assembly.
In 1930 he sat as a Member of the Native Economic Commission.[4]
He died at Alice in South Africa on 21 January 1938.
Snedegar, Keith (2015). Mission, Science and Race in South Africa: A.W. Roberts of Lovedale, 1883-1938. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. ISBN978-0739196243. 188 pp.
