Snedegar, Keith (Author)
Lexington Books
Physical Details: 207 pages
Language: English
Lost in the Stars is a biographical study of Alexander William Roberts, a Free Church of Scotland missionary educator who in 1883 was posted to the Lovedale Institution at Alice, South Africa. Inspired by the night sky of the southern hemisphere, Roberts became a leading observer of variable stars and an early contributor to the theory of close interacting binary stars. He actively promoted the development of colonial scientific culture and was elected president of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science in 1913. His teaching career at Lovedale fostered a commitment to the interests of his African students and their communities. In 1920 Roberts was appointed to the South African senate to represent “native” Africans; he also served as senior member of the Native Affairs Commission. Despite his liberal instincts he acquiesced to the movement toward racial segregation as advanced in the Natives (Urban Areas) and Native Administration Acts. Roberts nonetheless militated against the erosion of the Cape non-racial franchise rights; he resigned from the Native Affairs Commission just as the all-white parliament was poised to remove Africans from the common voters’ roll. His engagement with the politics of race interfered with Roberts’s astronomical research. Although he published nearly one hundred papers in scientific journals most of his observational data remained unknown until the Boyden Observatory’s Roberts archive was digitized in 2006. His influence as a mission educator also has been little known, although among his pupils were journalist and academic D.D.T. Jabavu, the physician James Moroka, and Swazi king Sobhuza I.
...MoreReview Roger S. Levine (2018) Review of "Mission, Science, and Race in South Africa: A. W. Roberts of Lovedale, 1883–1938". American Historical Review (pp. 361-362).
Review Jonathan Sadowsky (2016) Review of "Mission, Science, and Race in South Africa: A. W. Roberts of Lovedale, 1883–1938". International Journal of African Historical Studies (pp. 472-472).
Review Grace Davie (2017) Review of "Mission, Science, and Race in South Africa: A. W. Roberts of Lovedale, 1883–1938". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 212-214).
Similar Citations
Book
Anthony E. Clark;
Leland M. Roth;
(2020)
China Gothic: The Bishop of Beijing and His Cathedral
(/isis/citation/CBB144344631/)
Article
Digby, Anne;
(2007)
Medicine, Race and the General Good: The Career of Thomas N. G. Te Water (1857--1926), South African Doctor and Medical Politician
(/isis/citation/CBB000773969/)
Book
Creese, Mary R. S.;
Creese, Thomas M.;
(2010)
Ladies in the Laboratory III: South African, Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian Women in Science: Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: A Survey of Their Contributions
(/isis/citation/CBB001033292/)
Book
Ebert, Andreas D.;
(2008)
Jüdische Hochschullehrer an preußischen Universitäten (1870--1924): Eine quantitative Untersuchung mit biografischen Skizzen
(/isis/citation/CBB000951066/)
Book
Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt;
(2019)
Franz Boas: The Emergence of the Anthropologist
(/isis/citation/CBB468285066/)
Book
Regal, Brian;
(2002)
Henry Fairfield Osborn: Race and the Search for the Origins of Man
(/isis/citation/CBB000201525/)
Article
Anderson, Warwick;
(2014)
Hermannsburg, 1929: Turning Aboriginal “Primitives” into Modern Psychological Subjects
(/isis/citation/CBB001420013/)
Book
Blanckaert, Claude;
(2013)
La Vénus hottentote: Entre Barnum et Muséum
(/isis/citation/CBB001550803/)
Book
Dubow, Saul;
(2006)
A Commonwealth of Knowledge: Science, Sensibility, and White South Africa, 1820--2000
(/isis/citation/CBB000772117/)
Book
Winston, Andrew S.;
(2004)
Defining Difference: Race and Racism in the History of Psychology
(/isis/citation/CBB000471026/)
Article
Renata Bujakiewicz-Korońska;
Jan Koroński;
(2016)
The life of Tadeusz Banachiewicz and his scientific activity / Życie i działalność naukowa Tadeusza Banachiewicza
(/isis/citation/CBB605110261/)
Article
John S. Reid;
(2018)
David Gill FRS (1843–1914): The Making of a Royal Astronomer
(/isis/citation/CBB327893493/)
Book
Wayne Orchiston;
(2016)
John Tebbutt: Rebuilding and Strengthening the Foundations of Australian Astronomy
(/isis/citation/CBB858209500/)
Chapter
Tofigh Heidarzadeh;
(2014)
Wright, Arthur Williams
(/isis/citation/CBB812031973/)
Article
Dietrich Lemke;
(2018)
Verständliche Astronomie aus Heidelberg - Von Max Wolfs Himmelsbildern zum Haus der Astronomie
(/isis/citation/CBB902725342/)
Book
Dufner, Barbara;
(2002)
Den Himmel fest im Blick: Eine wissenschaftliche Biografie über den Astro-Optiker Bernhard Schmidt
(/isis/citation/CBB000500490/)
Article
Raposo, Pedro M. P.;
(2015)
Time, Weather and Empires: The Campos Rodrigues Observatory in Lourenço Marques, Mozambique (1905--1930)
(/isis/citation/CBB001551173/)
Book
Patrick Armstrong;
(2019)
Alfred Russel Wallace
(/isis/citation/CBB323050340/)
Article
Cortuo, Esteban;
(2010)
Mario Roso de Luna (1872--1931) Un ocultista peculiar
(/isis/citation/CBB001201534/)
Article
Débarbat, Suzanne;
Lequeux, James;
Orchiston, Wayne;
(2007)
Highlighting the History of French Radio Astronomy, 1: Nordmann's Attempt to Observe Solar Radio Emission in 1901
(/isis/citation/CBB000831602/)
Be the first to comment!