Robert Laws FRGS FRSGS (1851–1934) was a Scottish missionary who headed the Livingstonia mission in the Nyasaland Protectorate (now Malawi) for more than 50 years.

[1] Laws supported the aspirations of political leaders such as Simon Muhango and Levi Zililo Mumba, both educated at Livingstonia schools.

Robert's daughter Amelia Nyasa Laws (1886-1978) has written that, "The child's stepmother was upright in character, kind at heart, but stern in manner, ordering him to sit still until she gave him permission to do otherwise.

To this discipline he ascribed his capacity to focus, to listen, to refrain from comment, and in later years to assess the value of statements made in ignorance, before discussing or correcting them.

[8] Laws wrote to James Stewart, the principal of the Lovedale Institution for Xhosa in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, describing the mission and calling for African catechists.

He used chloroform for the first time at Cape Maclear on 2 March 1876 in a successful operation to remove a cystic tumour above the right eye of a young man, to the astonishment of the local people.

[13] In the late 1870s it became known that the Presbyterian mission could provide superior medical assistance, and missionaries from other stations would make difficult and sometimes dangerous journeys to obtain care from Laws.

[14] In 1878 the Free Church of Scotland transferred ownership of the Ilala steamer from the mission to the Livingstonia Central Africa Company.

[15] Laws collaborated with this Corporation, which succeeded in introducing trade to the lake region and the hinterland to the north, bringing prosperity to both Africans and settlers.

[8] In September that year Laws reached the Ngoni village of Chiputula Nhlane, a few miles east of today's Ekwendeni, accompanied by three other Europeans and forty-five porters.

When Laws took his first home leave in 1884, he told the Livingstonia Committee that the Angoni were the dominant race, and the great object of the mission should be to win them over.

[8] Today a stone cairn marks the place where Laws and his companion Uriah Chirwa camped in 1894 when they prospected the new site.

As with the other two institutions, the goals were to equip graduates with the skills needed in a modern economy so that they could improve their living standards and those of the community.

Bowring wrote "Livingstonia appeals to me enormously as a training centre because of its comparative isolation and at the same time easy accessibility.

Margaret Gray was a childhood companion from St Nicholas Lane United Presbyterian Church Sunday School in Aberdeen.

[4] The young couple shared an unwavering commitment to the mission field and married in Blantyre, Malawi, where St Michael and All Angels Church was to be constructed a decade later.

[12] He recorded meteorological conditions, gathered vocabularies of the local languages, taught the first pupils at the mission and undertook a vast official correspondence.

[12] Laws aimed to teach Africans the skills needed to run trades and small industries so they would not be at the mercy of the "Greeks, Indians and Chinese".

[32] The haplochromine cichlid endemic to Lake Malawi, Gephyrochromis lawsi was named by Geoffrey Fryer in 1957 to honour Laws' pioneering missionary endeavours, which contributed so much to the peace and prosperity of people of Nyasaland.