Robert Mitchell Henry, 1873-1950

Professor R.M. Henry (1873-1950), Born 11 February 1873 in Belfast. Educated Methodist College, Belfast and Queen's College Belfast graduating with a BA in 1893 and MA in 1898. He then went on to join the teaching staff of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution as Senior Classical Master, 1899-1905, before moving to Queen's in 1906 as a reader in classics, eventually rising to Professor of Latin in 1907, a position he held until his retirement from the university in 1938. His career at the University was long and diverse, extending from academia to administration, dominating almost every field of university life for 30 years. As Secretary to the Academic Council from 1908-38, his principal achievement was the Charter of 1909 by which the University was able to secure its independence within the Irish Universities Act of that year. Outside his professional work, Henry's main personal interests lay in adult education, social welfare, Irish history and Irish politics, giving freely of his time to the Workers Educational Association, publishing his own history of Sinn Fein (1920) and co-founding the Ulster Society for Irish Historical Studies (1936). Following his retirement from Queen's in 1938, Henry went on to the University of St. Andrew's to hold their Chair of Humanities. After 9 years in Edinburgh, he left to take up an honorary Chair of Classical Literature at Trinity College Dublin in 1947, which he held until his death in 1950.

Publications: Livy, bk xxxi (1905); (with Rev F.W. O'Connell) An Irish corpus astronomiae, being Manus O'Donnell's 17th century version of the Lunario of Geronymo Cortes (1915); The evolution of Sinn Fein (1920); (ed. with T.W. Dougan) M. Tulli Ciceronis Tusculanarum disputationum libri quinque, vol. ii, bk iii-v (1934); Virgil and the Roman Epic (1938).

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