David A. Robertson ’36 *40

David died July 19, 2004. He was 88.

He prepared at the Gilman School. At Princeton, he majored in English, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and was a member of Colonial Club. He also earned a doctorate in English at Princeton in 1940.

David spent a year as a Henry Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge University. There he met and later married Beridge Leigh-Mallory, a daughter of the English mountaineer George Leigh-Mallory, who died on Mount Everest in 1924. Beridge died in 1953.

During World War II, David served three years in the Washington office of the Chief of Naval Operations as a lieutenant. In 1946, he was ranked as a lieutenant commander in the Naval Reserve.

David was an English professor for more than 40 years at Barnard College of Columbia University. He retired in 1986. He had many interests, including mountaineering, and wrote three books.

He served Princeton on several department advisory committees. Later, after moving to Princeton in 1991, he was named chairman of the Friends of the Princeton University Library.

In 1964 he married Victoria A. Brier. Their marriage ended in divorce. David is survived by his wife, Harriet; children Anne Spencer, and Susan, Allan, Struan, Isabel, and Sam Robertson; stepchildren Ellen Stockmayer and Pieter Fisher; and six grandchildren.

The Class of 1936