Roberts, Stephen Henry

Born: Maldon, Victoria
Died: At sea (aboard the liner, Marconi) near Melbourne at the beginning of a voyage to Europe with his wife.
Family: Father, Christopher Roberts (1875-1925), goldminer; Mother, Doris Elsie Wilhelmina Wagener (1882-1958) (2 sons)
Married: 3 August 1927, Christ Church, Lancaster Gate, Bayswater, England, Thelma Lilian Beatrice Asche (3 daughters)
Education:
Maldon State School
Castlemaine High School
1916 Arthur Machen Hill Prize as Dux of School, and the Esther McCay History Prize; matriculated to the university but was too young to be admitted
1917 Requalified for university in the Victorian school leaving examination (first in History, first class honours in English, equal tenth in order of merit in the State)
1918 University of Melbourne (Arts); Teachers College
1918 First year university: 1st in English and in Psychology, Logic and Ethics and won several prizes
1919 Second year university: 1st in British History Parts I and II and in European History
1919 Army School of Instruction (qualified as an Instructor in Junior Cadet Training, 3rd Military District)
1920 Third year university: First Class Honours in British History Part I and 1st in year
March 1921 BA First Class Honours in History and Political Science; the Honour Exhibition in History and Political Science; the Wyeslaskie Scholarship in English Constitutional History; Wyeslaskie Scholarship in Political Economy; and the Dwight Prize in Sociology
21 April 1923 MA (Melb.) (thesis: History of Australian Settlement: 1788-1920)
1925 Frederick Knight Travelling Scholarship to be held at the London School of Economics under Harold J. Laski, Professor of Political Science, University of London
1925 to 1929 University of London; University of Paris
D.SC.Econ (London)
1935 to 1936 Research, Germany
Litt.D. (Melb.); LLD (Bristol, British Columbia & McGill); DCL (Durham); Dlitt (New England and Sydney)

Career:
1916 Student-teacher, Maldon State School and Castlemaine High School
1920 to 1925 Assistant Lecturer and Research Fellow (Tutor?), British History, University of Melbourne
1923 to 1924 Historical Society of Victoria
June 1925 First conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations, Honolulu
1927 Research Fellow, University of Melbourne
12 June 1929 to 1947 Challis Professor of History, University of Sydney
1941 to 1947 Dean, Faculty of Arts, University of Sydney
28 February 1947 to 1967 Vice-Chancellor, University of Sydney (presided over the greatest expansion in the history of the University to that time and had to reconstruct the University both internally and externally, and, in the opinion of one of his successors, J.M. Ward, most of his decisions were wise: see University of Sydney Archives Biography File No. 256)
195? Leader, Australian Delegation to the 7th quinquennial Congress of Universities of the British Commonwealth
1952 to 1971 Chairman, State Cancer Council (which he was instrumental in establishing and organising)
1965 Knighted
Influential in the appointment of the Murray Committee and the transformation of the basis of university finances which led to great increases in research and postgraduate training

Publications:
History of Australian Land Settlement (1788-1920), with an introduction by Professor Ernest Scott, Macmillan & Co., in association with Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1924
Population problems of the pacific, George Routledge & Sons Ltd, London, 1927
French Colonial Policy 1870-1925, P.S. King & Son, London, 1929 (Frome [Somerset]: Butler & Tanner)
With Charles H. Currey, Modern British history, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1932
History of modern Europe, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1933 (Halstead, Sydney)
History of the contacts between the Orient and Australia, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1935
The Squatting Age in Australia 1835 1847, Melbourne University Press in association with Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1935
The House that Hitler Built, Methuen Publishers, London, 1937
With Charles H. Currey, British History 1485-1815, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1949
Also, Foreign Affairs writer, Sydney Morning Herald; contributor, Cambridge History of the Empire, Cyclopedia of the Social Sciences; part-author, Australia and the Far East, 1935, and The Australian Mandate in New Guinea

See also Wood, David R.V., Stephen Henry Roberts, Sydney University Monographs Number Two, University of Sydney, Sydney, 1986