George, Robert H.

Robert Hudson George (1889-1979), professor of history, was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on December 25, 1889. After graduation from Amherst College in 1911, he earned his master of arts degree in 1913 and his Ph.D. in 1916, both from Harvard where he was instructor and tutor. He was an instructor at Harvard from 1914 to 1916 and at Yale in 1916-17. He was a captain in the infantry in the First World War and a member of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace in 1919. He returned to Yale as assistant professor from 1919 to 1922, and in 1922-23 was associate professor at Union College. He came to Brown as associate professor in 1923 and was promoted to full professor in 1939. He was named the first Munro-Goodwin-Wilkinson Professor in 1946. During a sabbatical leave in 1931-32 he visited England in search of documents to further his research on James II with the help of a grant from the Social Science Research Council. He later described this endeavor in a newspaper article entitled “The Great Manuscript Hunt,” which related his experience as a pioneer in microphotography, when, with the approval of the British Museum and the Public Record Office, he was able to make the best use of his valuable time abroad by photographing the documents himself for future study at home. In World War II George was historian of the Ninth Air Force and achieved the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He helped to write the official history of the Air Force. George was a popular professor, known for his History D1 survey course and for “his deep resounding voice, his interesting lectures, his pleasing personality,” noted in the Pembroke Record in 1946. His alma mater conferred an honorary L.H.D. degree upon him in 1954 with these words, “In the classroom you are a lecturer of rare artistry. Though you have so trained and inspired a number of younger colleagues that they too have achieved those peculiar skills that make for effective teaching, your chiefest monument is your myriad of students. ... You have taught them that history consists not of dusty annals but of all that is vital in human achievement and human aspiration.” After his retirement from Brown in 1960, he continued his work on the reign of James II and also compiled information and wrote articles on Brown University in the Civil War. He moved to his summer home in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, where he died on October 12, 1979. Both George and his wife had celebrated their 89th birthday on Christmas Day in 1978.