Robert Alexander Frazer, 1891-1959

Abstract Robert Alexander Frazer was born in the City of London on 5 February 1891. His father, Robert Watson Frazer, LL.B., had retired from the Madras Civil Service and had become Principal Librarian and Secretary of the London Institution at Finsbury Circus, whence in the following two decades he produced four books on India and its history, of which perhaps the best known was one published in the ‘Story of the Nations’ Series by Fisher Unwin, Ltd., in 1895. The family lived at the Institution and Robert was born there. Young Frazer proceeded in due course to the City of London School where he did remarkably well and won several scholarships and medals. By the time he was eighteen years of age, the City Corporation, desiring to commemorate the distinction just gained by Mr H. H. Asquith, a former pupil of the school, on his appointment as Prime Minister, founded the Asquith Scholarship of £100 per annum tenable for four years at Cambridge. It thus came about that at the school prize-giving in 1909 the Lord Mayor announced that the new Asquith Scholarship had been conferred on Frazer, who was so enabled to proceed to Pembroke College, Cambridge, that autumn. Frazer, in the course of his subsequent career, had two other formal links with London. In 1911 he was admitted to the Freedom of London in the Mayoralty of Sir Thomas Crosby, having been an Apprentice of T. M. Wood, ‘Citizen and Gardener of London’; and in 1930 he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science by the University of London. The former may or may not have been a pointer to his subsequent ability as a gardener in private life; the latter was certainly a well-deserved recognition of his scientific work at the time.