Austin Robinson, 20 November 1897–1 June 1993: an appreciation

Abstract

Austin Robinson was the unsung hero of Cambridge economics. As a Professor of Economics at Cambridge from 1950 to 1965 and through selfless service, often as Secretary, sometimes as Chairman of the Faculty Board of Economics and Politics, before and after the Second World War, he, more than anyone else, enabled the various opposing factions of the Faculty to co-exist. He was the guiding spirit behind the creation in the 1960s of the building which now bears his name. Most of all, he contributed, unobtrusively but profoundly, to the various revolutions in economic thinking that occurred in Cambridge. He himself thought that the 1930s was the most 'creative period' in which to be an economist. For it was then, he argued, that the 'revolutions' in value theory, welfare economics, employment theory and the quantification of economics occurred (Robinson, 1992, p. 209). Austin Robinson was a polite and courteous person, certainly a workaholic yet proud and mindful of his family and friends as well as of his country, college and faculty. He could be stubborn and imperious, but his kindly concern for particular individuals and his devotion to the under-privileged of all manner of societies aptly fulfilled his early hope that while 'not a crusading Christian ... he [would retain] the essentials of ... Christianity' (Robinson, 1992, p. 207). Austin Robinson was the 'son of an impecunious parson'. Scholarships took him to Marlborough and then Christ's to read Classics. But first (this was 1916) there was active service in the Royal Navy Air Service followed by testing and delivering new flying boats. This period was to remain an extremely significant episode in his life, about which he was writing in the months before he died. After the war he came up to Cambridge, as a member of that generation of returned service people 'naive [perhaps but] sincere' who were determined to see that war was never again used to settle differences between nations. Though he obtained a First in Classics after 15 months, his wartime experiences together with Keynes's lectures on what was to become The Economic Consequences of the Peace—'a revelation'—determined him to become an economist. He wanted to understand how economies function or malfunction and what could be done about this. Both in the 1930s, when he had two spells working on the African economy, including a visit to what was then Northern Rhodesia, and during the Second World War, when he held posts in the Cabinet Office, the Ministry of Production and the Board of Trade,