THE RHODES SCHOLARSHIP

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 12131, 1 March 1905, Page 8

THE RHODES SCHOLARSHIP

MR P- W. ROBERTSON SELECTED

(special to "nrs raiss.")

WELLINGTON; February 28

The selection of Mr P. W. Robertson as the Rhodes' scholar for this year is very popular in Wellington.' Robertson, whose career considering his youth has,been unusually brilliant, is a very modest and unassuming. young fellow, who is thought a great deal of by his fellow graduates of the Victoria College. The; voting to-day was very close between Robertson and Cook, of Canterbury, and it was only after the twelfth ballot thai Robertson was declared the winner. The newly elected, scholar, who is a son of Mr J}. Robertson, chief clerk, of the.Post and Telegraph Department, was born at Auckland in 1884, and is therefore in his twcntyfirst year. At Wellington College, in 1898, be. gained the senior Government scholarship at, the age of fourteen. The next year ho was Uie. Turnbnll scholar, and in 1900 was the first W. B. Rhodes scholar 7as ; well „as,! "head of the school," ". besides' gaining a Junior University Scholarship. In 190), at Victoria College, Mr Robertson was awarded the, Sir George Grey Scholarship for science, and in 1903 he-gained bis B.A. degree, and received the, Senior Scholarship in chemistry. He has just been, informed that cable advice has been .received of his passing for M.A., with first-class honours in chemistry. Notwithstanding his comparative youth, Mr Robertson is well known as a scientist. He was elected a Fellow of the Chemical Society of London in 1903, and the Society has ! already published a number of his research papers, which are said to show much originality. Mr Robertson is a hockey and tennis player, and in 1903 represented his College at the Inter-University Tournament in Dunedin. He achieved, not long since, a' feat unique in the records of University life in the British Empire, when he had an original treatise on a scientific subject published by the Chemical Society of England before ho was twenty years of age.