Rate My Professor R.L. Dunbabin

Robert Leslie Dunbabin (1869–1949) served as Professor of Classics at the University of Tasmania from 1917 until his retirement in 1940, when he was appointed emeritus professor. Born on 16 July 1869 at Cambridge, Tasmania, he was educated at The Hutchins School in Hobart and won a Tasmanian government scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he studied classics and graduated B.A. in 1892. He taught at Melbourne Church of England Grammar School from 1894 to 1895 and at The Hutchins School from 1897 to 1901 before accepting a lectureship in mental and moral science at the University of Tasmania. In 1905 he served as temporary associate professor of classics at the University of Adelaide and returned to Hobart the following year as lecturer in classics and modern history, in addition to mental and moral science. He was promoted to assistant professor in 1914 and appointed to the chair of classics in 1917 following the separation of the classics and English departments.

Dunbabin was a highly regarded classical scholar of the traditional philological school, contributing numerous short notes to the Classical Review and Classical Quarterly on points of etymology, paleography, lexicography, and related topics, as well as corresponding on revisions to Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon. He published no monographs and maintained exacting standards of accuracy, opposing courses in classical civilization or classics in translation. He played a significant role in university administration as a member of the professorial board from 1914 to 1939, the Rhodes scholarship committee from 1922 to 1947, and the university council in 1921–1926 and 1933. He briefly served as vice-chancellor in 1933 before resigning on medical advice. Unmarried, Dunbabin died on 15 October 1949. His bequest endowed a classical scholarship and left his library to the university for use by the professor of classics.

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