Just one remarkable Old Cestrefeldian has received a Nobel prize – and he comes from a famous local family, as Barrie Farnsworth reports.
SIR Robert Robinson was born at Rufford House Farm, Chander Hill, near Holymoorside, on September 13, 1886. He was the son of James Bradbury Robinson, then concentrating on the production of surgical dressings at the family firm, Robinson and Sons, and his wife Jane (nee Davenport). After kindergarten, Robert attended Chesterfield Grammar School as a weekly boarder. When he was 12, however, he was sent to the independent Fulneck School – part of a Moravian settlement near Pudsey, in West Yorkshire – as a boarder. He then gained a BSc in Chemistry at the University of Manchester in 1905. Just two years later, he gained a research fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, given to only “eight young scientists or engineers of exceptional promise”. In 1912 Sir Robert married Gertrude Maud Walsh, a fellow student at Manchester University. They collaborated in several fields of chemical research…