Born at Manchester and spent his childhood in Windermere. Educated at Harrow and Cambridge where he read law and became a barrister. His interest in natural history was such, however, that he soon gave this up and returned to Cambridge as a postgraduate student of biology. Subsequently became a farmer at Crook near Kendal with a special interest in economic entomology. During the first World War he moved to Rothamstead where he worked on aphids and elateridae, particularly species of Agriotes and Athous on which he published 5 papers between 1915-1928. Shortly after the War he married Ruth Gimingham and moved to Cambridge where he took up a post at the Molteno Institute for Parasitology. Whilst there he became interested in beetle larvae and in particular those of the Curculionidae on which he published several papers including his ‘Key to the principal families of Coleoptera in the larval stage’ (Bull. Ent. Research, 21, 1930, pp.57-72) and an important paper on Erotylid larvae (Trans.RESL., 88, 1939, pp.89-117) both illustrated by numerous drawings which he prepared himself. F.van Emden, from whose obituary of Roberts in EMM., 91, 1955, p.168 the above is taken, commented that his papers were ‘a model of thoroughness and form important contributions... His ‘Key to the principal families...’ [is] the first comprehensive modern key...’ (MD 11/04)
Dates
1 December 1879 – 9 April 1955