THE SECOND RHODES SCHOLARSHIP.

Otago Witness, Issue 2661, 15 March 1905, Page 4

THE SECOND RHODES SCHOLARSHIP.

(Fp.om Our Own Coreespondext.) WELLINGTON, February 28. The selection o. Mr P. Rob-artson a3 the Rhodes scholar for this year is very popular in Wellington. Mr Robertson, whose career, considering his youth, has been unusually brilliant, is a very modest and unassuming young fellov.% who is thought a great deal of by his fellowgradustes of Victoria College. The "voting-to-day was very close between Robertson and Cooke (of Canterbury), and it was only a f ter the twelfth ballot that Robertson was declared the winner. The newly-elected! scholar, who is a son of Mr D. Robertson, chief clerk of th° .Post and Telegraph Department, was born at Auckland in 1884-, and is therefore in his twenty-first year. At Wellington College in i 893 he gained the» Senior Government scholarship at the ago of 14. Next yeai he was Turnbull scholar, and in 1900 the first W . B. Rhodes- scholar, as well as "head of the school." Besides gaining a Junior University scholarship in 1901 at Victoria College Mr Robertson was awarded the Sir Georg-e Grey scholarship for science, and in 1903 he gained his B.A. •degree, and received the senior scholarship in chemistry. He has "ju^-t been informed that cable advice has been received of his passing for the M.A.. with first-class honours in chemistry. Notwithstanding his comparative youth, Mr Robertson is well known, as a scient st. He was el-ected a Fel'ow 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 interuniversity tournament in Dxmedin. He achieved, nor long since, a feat uniane in t've record* of University life in the British Empire, when he had an original treatise on a scientific suhiect published by the Chemical Society of England before he was 20 years of age.