When Herbert “Barry” Robins (Sc’64) began coaching local hockey many years ago in his adopted home of New City, N.Y., two scrappy youngsters caught his attention. The boys’ family had fallen on hard times after the death of their police officer father and the pair couldn’t afford the equipment to join the team.
Not only did Mr. Robins go out and buy everything the two needed to get the opportunity to play, he made sure to offer the kids odd jobs, like mowing his lawn, so they earned extra money to help their mother.
That sense of community and responsibility to give back ran deep in Mr. Robins, who never forgot his roots in Portsmouth, Ont., where he and his family struggled to make ends meet after his own father died suddenly when he was about 10 years old.
Despite working as much as he could to help his family, Mr. Robins achieved high grades in school, which prompted a cousin to encourage him to apply to Queen’s. That determined young kid from a small town near Kingston soon became the first person in his family to attend university.
Like those two hockey-playing boys years ago, Mr. Robins found someone at Queen’s who offered opportunity: Rev. Dr. Alexander Marshall Laverty. After arranging a small bursary to help with tuition, Padre Laverty ensured Mr. Robins became a fixture at most Queen’s sporting events as the university’s photographer, a job that influenced his academic career in more ways than one.
“Our father basically was the Queen’s University photographer and used to do all the sports teams to make some kind of income to help his mom and his sister out while he was still going to university,” says son David Robins (Sc’91), now co-chief executive officer of DavosPharma with his brother, Brian (Sc’94).
“What comes through is the remarkable character of this man. He exuded what Queen’s wants to be when we think of ourselves in our best light.”
“He was also working all the time, and I can’t remember how many exams he told me he failed,” adds Brian Robins. “But he was able to get through because everyone, especially the professors, really looked after him and made sure he had all the notes and everything. And then, when he finished university, he always wanted to give back.”
After Mr. Robins graduated from Queen’s, he began working as an engineer and in marketing before founding DavosPharma in 1972. He proceeded to build a hugely successful company that works in the space between chemistry and engineering, offering scientific expertise as well as technical and regulatory support during drug development.
Mr. Robins’ involvement with Queen’s didn’t end when he left with a degree; instead, he served on the university’s Chemistry Innovation Council and acted as an ad hoc adviser to Smith Engineering administration and professors. And not only did both sons follow in their father’s footsteps and attend Queen’s, three grandchildren did as well, tying three generations of the Robins family to the university.
His desire to give back culminated in the Robins Family Professorship in Engineering Chemistry, which welcomed its inaugural recipient in 2023 – Kingston native Dr. Rachel Baker (Sc’17), who returned to Queen’s following post-doctoral work at the California Institute of Technology.
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Barry Robins with his family: wife Jane and sons David and Brian.
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Like DavosPharma, the professorship works in the space between chemical engineering and chemistry to give students the opportunity to develop a set of additional skills beyond what’s available in the two separate programs. It allows them to become intermediaries who bridge the gaps between the two disciplines in areas such as fuel-cell and battery technology and green chemistry processes.
“I’m very grateful for the professorship because it allows me to be here,” says Dr. Baker, who first met Mr. Robins and the rest of the family at a Queen’s event in late 2022 to announce the professorship.
“The thing with Barry is that he was not only generous but kind, funny, obviously extremely intelligent, and cared deeply about Queen’s students and the community. I had a couple of phone calls with Barry after our first meeting and what really struck me was that he didn’t just give money. It was really cool to see that he cared and that the family cares a lot about how things are going here and want to help figure out how we can make this program even better.”
Smith Engineering Dean Dr. Kevin Deluzio remembers Mr. Robins as a remarkable human being and entrepreneur who cared deeply about family, education, and relationships, and who never forgot the community of support he experienced at Queen’s.
Dr. Deluzio stresses that the professorship funded by Mr. Robins’ endowment does not bear his name, but that of the family, something that reflected his sense of humility and recognition of the help he got on his path to success.
“It was so important for him to emphasize the family in the naming of the professorship,” Dr. Deluzio says.
“What comes through is the remarkable character of this man. He exuded what Queen’s wants to be when we think of ourselves in our best light – he was the personification of that. His dedication to the community, his humility, his social impact and doing what he could to make an impact on the world and to make it better. It really is, in a humble way, what Barry was all about.”
While Mr. Robins wanted to give back to Queen’s, he hesitated at first because the attention brought by an endowment never appealed to him. In the end, Mr. Robins agreed to stand in the limelight for the greater good.
“He was pretty humble, but we thought it was important for other people to see that there is a way out, because I find it quite remarkable to be 10 years old without a father, have the responsibility of taking care of your mother and your sister, and be able to make it like he did,” says Dr. Deluzio. “I don’t know a lot of people that have that in them.”
Mr. Robins died Oct. 26, 2024, in New City, N.Y., at the age of 83.
