Robert Davies Roberts

Born at Aberystwyth on 5 March 1851, he was the eldest son of Richard Roberts, a timber merchant and shipowner there, and was brought up a Calvinistic Methodist.

He changed direction, with an ambition to organise and develop higher education among the classes that were at that time not touched by the universities.

In the new University of Wales he served as junior deputy chancellor (1903–5) and as chairman (1910–11) of the executive committee of the court, on which he sat as one of the representatives of the college of his native town.

[1] He opposed as inadequate the proposal by Albert Mansbridge to limit working men to non-graduate university courses.

In June 1911 he attended a preliminary conference of Canadian universities at Montreal, bur suddenly died of calcification of the coronary arteries at his house at Kensington on 14 November 1911.

In his memory two scholarships for the encouragement of university extension work were founded by public subscription, the administration of the fund being undertaken by the Gilchrist trustees.

He left no children, and by his will he bequeathed the residue of his estate to Aberystwyth College, to form the nucleus of a fund for sabbatical leave.