Robert Andrew Glendinning Carson 1918–2006

Robert Andrew Glendinning Carson (1918–2006), a Fellow of the British Academy, spent his career at the British Museum, where he rose to be Keeper of the Department of Coins & Medals. He was the leading British expert in Roman numismatics of his generation. Carson was a prolific scholar and his bibliography runs to more than 350 items. He had been set high standards by his mentor, Harold Mattingly, who served as Curator of Roman coins at the British Museum from 1910 to 1947. But perhaps Carson's most influential contribution to the study of Roman coins lay in the work he carried out in collaboration with John Kent. As Curator of Roman coins at the British Museum, it was perhaps inevitable that Carson should take an interest in the coins of the British usurpers Carausius and Allectus, and he published a series of papers on their coinages. Carson had an international reputation: he was actively involved in the organisation of international numismatic congresses from the 1950s.