Robert Wallace

Robert Wallace (24 June 1853 – 17 January 1939) was Scottish professor of agriculture who worked at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester and at the University of Edinburgh where he helped establish agricultural education. He travelled around the British colonies, examining agriculture and livestock husbandry, and wrote numerous books and contributed several entries related to farming for the 11th edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Life Wallace was born on 24 June 1853 in the ancestral family home, Wallace Hall in Glencairn, Dumfriesshire, the second son of Susan Reid and her husband, Samuel Wallace, a gentleman farmer. He was educated at Tynron Parish School and then Hutton Hall Academy near Bankend. He then studied at the University of Edinburgh graduating with an MA around 1872. He then spent ten years farming his father's estates along with his brother Samuel Williamson Wallace (1855–1932) who became director of agriculture for the state of Victoria in Australia in 1902. From 1882 to 1885 he began to teach at the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester and served as a Professor of Agriculture. In 1885 he returned to Edinburgh as Professor of Agriculture and Rural Economy. In 1886 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh proposed by Robert Gray, John Wilson, Peter Guthrie Tait and Henry Alleyne Nicholson. He worked towards the establishment of BSc degrees in agriculture and in helped found the Edinburgh and East of Scotland College of Agriculture in 1906. From 1915 to 1917 he corresponded with President Woodrow Wilson of the United States on the ill-treatment of prisoners-of-war by Germany and sought American intervention.