Robert Arthur (Robin) Humphreys, was the first professor of Latin American history and the founder of Latin American studies in the United Kingdom. As a scholar, teacher, and administrator, he set the standards which gained for the subject academic status and funding. He was born on 6 June 1907 in Lincoln and attended Lincoln School. From there he went to Peterhouse, Cambridge. In 1932, two years after being a Commonwealth Fund Fellow at the University of Michigan, he was appointed as assistant lecturer in American history at University College London. He was soon regarded as a scholar of high promise and, using the concept of American history in its widest sense, began to introduce Latin America into his teaching. In 1939 he was invited to join the Foreign Office in research capacity. There he met Elisabeth Pares and they married in 1946. Her family became his, and he had a...
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