Robert Livinston Allen (1916 – October 9, 1982), was an American professor of linguistics and education at Teachers College, Columbia University known for his development of Sector Analysis, a grammatical system used in the teaching and analysis of languages in the United States and around the world.
[1][2] Born in 1916 in Hamadan, Iran, the son of Presbyterian missionaries, Robert Allen was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and graduated as valedictorian from Hamilton College where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
After teaching in Turkey, Afghanistan, Burma, and Indonesia, he joined the faculty of Teachers College in 1959, where he served as the chair of the Department of Languages, Literature, Speech and Theatre from 1965 to 1969.
He was active in the founding of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) as an independent organization along with his first wife Virginia French Allen.
Allen also served on the editorial board of WORD, the publication of the International Linguistic Association.