[1] Robins enjoyed the writings of the celebrated ornithologist Arthur Augustus Allen of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
Robins wanted to study under Allen, so he went to Cornell in 1946, However, by that time the biology department had begun to move from concentrating on ornithology to ichthyology led by Edward C. Raney.
Nevertheless, Robins finished his Ph.D. thesis in 1955, revising the eastern North American sculpins which were classified in the two species groups around Cottus bairdii and C.
[1] After attaining his PhD, Robins joined the U.S. Army Chemical Corps at their biological warfare facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland, serving for 2 years.
[3][1] In the 1960s, Robins was committee chair for the PhD of Catherine Hale, a taxonomic review of the Synaphobranchidae, a family of deep-sea eels.
[3] Following Robins retirement from the University of Miami Marine Laboratory, the support of the collection of 33,000 fish specimens he created ceased.
They had three children: Catherine Elaine, an author of fantasy and science fiction under the pen name Elaine Lane; Robert Hale, ichthyology collection manager at the Florida Museum of Natural History; and Colin Richard, a professor of soil science at Claremont McKenna College in California.